Diasporic Spaces: A Comparative Study of Selected Diasporic Fiction

A Dissertation submitted to the Central University of Punjab

for the Award of

Master of Philosophy

in

Comparative Literature

by

Sameer Ahmad Shah

Supervisor: Dr. Amandeep Singh

Centre for Comparative Literature

School of Languages, Literature and Culture

Central University of Punjab, Bathinda

Aug 2014

ii

CERTIFICATE

I declare that this dissertation entitled “DIASPORIC SPACES: A COMPARATIVE

STUDY OF SELECTED DIASPORIC FICTION” has been prepared by me under

the guidance of Dr. Amandeep Singh, Supervisor, Centre for Comparative

Literature, School of Languages, Literature and Culture, Central University of

Punjab. No part of this dissertation has formed the basis for the award of any

degree or fellowship previously.

Sameer Ahmad Shah

Centre for Comparative Literature,

School of Languages, Literature and Culture,

Central University of Punjab,

Bathinda –151001

Date:

iii

CERTIFICATE

I certify that Sameer Ahmad Shah prepared his dissertation entitled “DIASPORIC

SPACES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SELECTED DIASPORIC FICTION”, for

the award of M.Phil degree of the Central University of Punjab, under my

guidance. He has carried out this work at the Centre for Comparative Literature,

School of Languages, Literature and Culture, Central University of Punjab.

(Dr. Amandeep Singh)

Supervisor

Centre for Comparative Literature,

School of Languages, Literature and Culture,

Central University of Punjab,

Bathinda –151001

Date:

iv

ABSTRACT

Diasporic Spaces: A Comparative Study of Selected Diasporic Fiction

Name of Student : Sameer Ahmad Shah

Registration Number : CUPB/MPH-PHD/SLLC/CPL/2012-13/01

Degree for which submitted : Master of Philosophy

Supervisor : Dr. Amandeep Singh

Centre : Comparative Literature

School of Studies : School of Languages, Literature and Culture

Key Words : Diaspora, Diasporic Space,

Generation Gap, Assimilation, Born Confused, Jasmine, The Namesake.

This study is an attempt to do the comparative analysis of three novels by

three Indian English women writers, The Namesake, Jasmine and Born Confused

by Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee and Tanuja Desai Hidier respectively.

Starting with diaspora, its phases and its types, it focuses on the making of

diasporic spaces amid diaspora. It also shows the characters’ struggle to make

their home and space in a foreign land. Every character is shown as having his/her

own perception of home, space and world of belonging. All three novels are an

important part of Modern Diasporic Indian English Literature. Study of ‘diaspora

space’ shows how individual identity is shaped and where differences are created,

and it also shows how identities are formulated and constructed by physical,

mental and social attitudes. Individual identities and his/her relation with homeland

have undergone considerable change in recent decades. It has lost its fixity and

migrants are in a process of becoming global citizens. The study of the three

novels taken up for comparison suggests that all the characters try their best to

penetrate their roots deep into the American soil, but everyone is not fully

successful in doing so. All diasporic people struggle to create a separate space in

host country but everyone struggles in his/her own way. Analysing diaspora space

and other identity issues relating to diaspora helps in understanding of how and

where identity is shaped and differences are made and remade.

(Sameer Ahmad Shah) (Name and Signature of Supervisor)

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all I am very thankful to Allah for everything I have in life, my loving family,

good health and sweet and caring friends. My sincere thanks and gratitude goes to

my Research Advisor, Dr. Amandeep Singh, Assistant Professor, Centre for

Comparative Literature, Central University of Punjab, for his guidance and

encouragement in completing this work. Every researcher is not so lucky to work

with such a humble and hardworking supervisor, I consider myself lucky to have

worked under the supervision of such an insightful guide. His valuable suggestions

have helped me a lot in the completion of this dissertation.

I felt obliged and grateful to Prof. Chaman Lal, COC, Centre for Comparative

Literature, and other faculty members, Dr. Neetu Purohit, Dr. Yadwinder Singh,

and Dr. V.J Varghese for their support in completing this study.

This work is dedicated to my loving family; my parents Ghulam Mohammad Shah

and Hamida Bano, my sisters and my brother, who did every possible effort to

continue my study, and I am in a position to complete my M.Phil. degree.

My special thanks to my friends for their love, respect, suggestions, and everything

they did for me, words are not enough to express my love and respect for such

beautiful friends. The time spend with them was memorable, and were precious

moments of my life. My special thanks to Rajandeep Gill, Showkat Ahmad,

Mudasir Ghulam, Hilal Ramzan, Nancy, Priyanka, Sheetal Meenia and Shah

Azhar.

Without the reference of my seniors in this acknowledgement, I don’t think it to be

complete. In their praise, I want to say that all are very co-operative and nice

human beings.

(Sameer Ahmad)

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sr. No

Content

Page Number

1.

(Chapter-1) Diaspora and Diasporic Spaces: An Introduction

1-20

2.

(Chapter-2) Diasporic Space in The Namesake

21-35

3.

(Chapter-3) Diasporic Spaces in Born Confused and jasmine

36-54

4.

(Chapter-4) Comparative Analysis and Conclusion

55-72

5.

Bibliography

73-77

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CHAPTER 1

Diaspora and Diasporic Spaces: An Introduction

Since the dawn of the human civilisation, human race has been on

constant movement from one place to other in search of food, shelter, and

other necessities of life. In ancient times people used to move from place to

place, and for not being settled at one particular place, were called wanderers

or food gatherers. As time passed, standard of life improved, social set up

came into existence and gradually came the notion of states/borders, and

people were confined to one particular place and became the citizens of that

particular land. Crossing the borders of one’s homeland and settling in other's

land sometimes resulted in creation of distinct migrations known as diasporas.

The word ‘diaspora’ is derived from the Greek root, ‘dia’ and ‘speirein,’ ‘dia’

means through and ‘speirein’ means to scatter. Diaspora is generally the

movement or migration of people from one place to another or from one

country to the other. Migration can be national as well as transnational. The

term diaspora has changed its meaning from time to time; sometimes it is

related to Jewish migration, sometimes with slavery and sometimes with the

migration of entrepreneurs and other young professionals. There are

migrations from every country and from every state for one reason or the other.

Some developed countries like United States, United Kingdom, Canada and

Australia are the ones who receive migrants in large numbers than any other

country in the world. Some developing countries like India, Pakistan, China

and other Asian countries are the leading ones from where the migrations take

place in large numbers. The term diaspora is very much used in present day

discourse although the theme of migration has been portrayed in ancient and

medieval literature also.

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin define ‘diaspora’ as “the

voluntary or forcible movement of people[s] from their homelands into new

regions …” (68).

This quote states that the term diaspora simply means a group of

people who are expelled or migrate from their original homeland to other

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countries. But dislocation from ones historical homeland to new one does not

mean that one becomes a diaspora, there are some special characteristics as

mentioned by William Safran for migrants to be categorised as diaspora, e.g.

after migrating to other country one should have a desire and yearning for

his/her ancestral homeland. The scattering of a group should be from one

place to more than one place (83-84). There is a feeling of un-comfortability

among diasporic people in host country. Diasporas further live in a kind of

“ambivalence”, a term first coined by Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler in 1911

The concept was later used by Homi K. Bhabha in literature and cultural

studies to indicate that diasporic characters are not sure which culture/country

they really belong to. So in simple words diaspora does not only mean

crossing borders or to be transnational. Homi K. Bhabha has proposed the

notion of the “Third Space” as an ambivalent space where the act of cultural

enunciation and interpretation can take place:

The intervention of the ‘Third Space’, which makes the structure

of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror

of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed

as an integrated, open, expanding code…the disruptive temporality of

enunciation displaces the narrative of the western nation. (206)

In almost all academic fields, interdisciplinary as well as

multidisciplinary, the scholars have engaged in a long debate on diasporic

issues. In literature, it has been discussed in every language and every genre

from classic to present times. If we talk about English literature- poetry, prose,

novel, drama and other narratives vividly portray the diasporic themes and

characters.

Alison Blunt has associated diaspora mainly with geography without

ignoring other aspects of diaspora like cultural dislocation, the dream for home

and issues of identity:

The term ‘diaspora’ is inherently geographical, implying a

scattering of people over space and transnational connections

between people and places. Geography clearly lies at the heart of

diaspora both as a concept and as lived experience, encompassing the

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contested interplay of place, home, culture and identity through

migration and resettlement. (282)

There are many causes for migration like political, economic, social,

religious etc. There can be political causes like if someone is sent for exile to

other country, economic causes like lack of opportunities in homeland and

hope and availability of opportunities in host land. Diaspora can be both a

deliberate as well as a forced act. After 20th century, mostly migrations took

place for economic causes as compared to that of migrations due to political

unrest during 20th century. Due to the technological developments, like

internet, mobile phone and air transport diasporic people get a sigh of relief as

they can travel to their homeland easily and in less time, and they can talk on

phone, chat on social networks and even can do video chat with the relatives

in homeland/source country which lessens the pain of diaspora. So the pain

and agony of diaspora has become very less and has not remained same as it

used to be a decade ago or so. The term diaspora has changed its notion from

time to time; it has not remained confined to one particular meaning for a long

time. Earlier diaspora was used only for Jewish people who were, “forcefully

expelled from their homeland, Jerusalem to Babylon during 587-86 BC” (Rosa)

but now it is used in a broader perspective.

Influx of migrants belonging to different cultures, ethnicities,

nationalities have turned the receiving nations into multicultural societies.

Among other communities of diaspora, Indian diaspora have also influenced

demographic structure of host nations. Diaspora is one of the global issues in

the contemporary world where the crisis of immigrants, refugees, and all other

exiles is rapidly changing its forms. Now in India the term NRI is very

commonly used for those who have migrated to industrially developed

countries like U.K, U.S.A, Australia and Canada. Ruchi and Sandhya Saxena

in their article “Indian Diaspora: Locations, Histories and Strategies of

Negotiation” differentiates between diaspora with ‘D’ upper case and diaspora

with ‘d’ lower case, the former stands for dislocation of Jews and the later

stands for all other displacements which took place presently for the

dislocation of Jews is very old and is over now so during present time

‘diaspora’ with lowercase “d” is commonly used.

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Robin Cohen in his Global Diasporas: An Introduction, classifies

Diaspora as: Victim Diasporas, Labour Diasporas, Imperial Diasporas, Trade

Diasporas, Homeland Diasporas, and Cultural Diasporas.

1) Victim diasporas are those people who are banished from their place

of origin and sent to another land. It is usually a result of traumatic event like

conquest, persecution, enslavement, genocide or exile.

2) Labour diaspora is that diaspora when people are made bonded

labourers and taken to other country, e.g. indentured Indians during colonial

period who were made to work in coal mines and rubber plantation.

3) Imperial diaspora is that when migrants go to another land that has

been conquered by their own nation and enjoy higher status on account of

their ethnic ties to the ruling power. Imperial diasporas do not adapt to the

customs of the host country but in return the locals are much influenced and

adapt to their customs, e.g. the English people in India during their rule. In

simple terms in Imperial diaspora the Colonizers are the Imperial diasporas,

and Colonized adapt their culture and customs which mostly involves

language. This is what Bhabha calls mimicry.

4) Trading diaspora is a community who go abroad to conduct trade.

They receive permission from the government of that country, learn local

language and customs only in order to promote their business but do not

assimilate with the culture of the host country.

Robin Cohen has classified the history of diaspora into four phases

based on the meaning of the term ‘diaspora’ which has changed from time to

time. The first phase of diaspora is its classical use and in theological sense,

related with the migration of Jews, Africans and Armenians and later

Palestinians were also added to this group. The second phase started

from1980 onwards, and in this period Diaspora was associated with different

categories of people like expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien

residents, and ethnic minorities. The third phase started from the mid 1990s,

the Diasporic theorists of this phase were influenced by postmodernist

readings and sought to decompose two of the major building blocks previously

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delimiting and demarcating the diasporas idea namely ‘homeland’ and

‘ethnic/religious community’. The fourth phase started with the advent of 21st

century. The ideas of ‘home’ and the stronger inflictions of ‘homeland’ remain

powerful discourses of this period (1).

Vijay Mishra in the introduction of his article entitled “Diasporas” labels

post-war South Asian, Chinese, Arab and Korean communities settled in

Britain, Europe, America, Canada and Australia as roots and ancestors of

modern diaspora. Talking about the concept of diaspora, issues like, notion of

border, the histories of slavery and expatriates, the experiences of dislocation,

relocation and homelessness, the ideologies of ‘home’ and nation, the cultures

of diaspora, the politics of multiculturalism, the predicament of minorities, the

exilic perspective, the redefinition of cosmopolitanism or what we call universal

man, and identity questions like belonging, national origins, assimilation,

acculturation, and issues related to racism must be taken into account.

Postcolonial cultural studies has a special interest in theorizing the ‘new’

phenomena of borders and borderlands, hybridity, language, translation,

double consciousness, history and its lack; and in the affective dimensions of

migration and diaspora. (qtd. in Ruchi and Saxena)

Indian diaspora is one of the largest diaspora in the world after China.

Indian diaspora simply refers to the people of Indian origin who have crossed

national borders and settled in foreign lands. The Indian diaspora has a very

old history. Some scholars even go back to Buddhist era when Buddhist

missionaries from India travelled to new lands, but history proves that at all

times, trade has been a moving factor behind Indian emigration. According to

TLS Bhaskar the journey of Indian diaspora is divided into three phases-

ancient, medieval and modern.

1. The ancient phase generally refers to the movement of Indian

labourers and craftsmen as well as others desirous of exploring avenues in

new lands, and other religious missionaries.

2. The second phase of Indian diaspora started during the medieval

times mainly under the British rule when Indians started crossing the borders

into new lands in more numbers as indentured labourers, and went overseas,

xii

especially in other British colonies across the globe as labourers on contract

basis.

3. The modern era of Indian diaspora began during the last decade of

twentieth century, which saw a steep rise in emigration, especially due to the

attraction of other industrially-advanced nations like United Kingdom, America,

Australia, Canada and many Gulf countries. Transnational community of

Indians is known with a list of names in various literary texts, like, Indian

Immigrant, Indian Community Abroad, Indian Abroad, People of Indian Origin,

Sucked Oranges, Indian Minorities, Indian Settlers, Indian Indenture Labour,

East Indian, Indian Overseas, Coolie Beast, Indian Coolie, and Diaspora

Indians. (Bhaskar)

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are those forced migrants who

migrate within the national boundaries, and do not cross international borders.

They migrate because of fear of harassment for reasons of race, religion,

political opinion or civil unrest and disturbances in the place of origin. As a

result they are displaced from their original homeland:

In India, internal displacement figures rise alarmingly in the

Kashmir Valley and in other regions as a result of continued political

violence. Internal displacement can also take place as a result of

natural distress, disasters or calamities ... Along with natural disasters,

planned development programmes have created more than 21.3

million internally displaced in India. They include displacement by

building dams, mines, industrial establishments, wildlife sanctuaries

and national parks. (Qtd. In Majumdar 215-16)

A plethora of literature is written on the theme of diaspora by Indian

diasporic writers both in vernacular as well as in English language. The

literature of the Indian diaspora constitutes an important part of the growing

field of postcolonial English literature. Some of the best-known authors in this

field include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati

Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tanuja Desai Hidier, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai,

M.G. Vassanji, Agha Shahid Ali, Shyam Selvadurai, Kiran Desai, and others

like Homi K. Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai. All diasporic writers write about

xiii

diasporic experiences because living in diaspora has been a kind of source

and impetus for their writing, it is through their writing that they give vent to

their feelings and repressed desires of aspiring and yearning for home,

homeland and nation. They give shape to their imaginary world through their

creativity i.e. creative writing. Salman Rushdie in his Imaginary Homelands

says how diasporic writers through their writings create an imaginary and a

fictitious world of their own. According to Rushdie it is impossible for diasporic

people to go back to the homeland, so they present everything imaginary in

their fiction. Like Salman Rushdie, many diasporic writers are haunted by

some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim back their past. But reclaiming back

the past is not a comfortable process always, there are always some fissures,

some missing links with the past. Rushdie tries to make memories of his past

as imaginatively true as he could but imaginative truth is like a delusion and is

always in suspect. Rushdie writes, “that our (writers) physical alienation from

India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming

precisely the thing that we lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual

cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind”

(10).

Diasporic writers write about first, second and third generation

diaspora. Almost all the writers have first-hand experience of living in diaspora,

they know what it is to be homeless, leaving behind a culture, family and

relatives and what it is to live in a foreign land. The most important issues what

they wrote about are home, homeland, cultural clash, acculturation, limits of

assimilation, dislocation, and relocation etc. It is very painful to live away from

ones’ homeland, family and friends, so it is very painful to live in diaspora. One

thing must be kept in mind that all literature written by Indian or Asian writers in

foreign countries cannot be called diasporic literature. For example, all work of

Salman Rushdie, who lives in United Kingdom and writes about diasporic

experience, cannot be categorised as diasporic. Literature written by second-

generation migrants usually explores the feelings of living neither here nor

there, sometimes known as the ‘third space’ which is the space of negotiations

between different cultures.

xiv

In a diasporic text there should be crossing of borders, moving from one

culture to another and sense of alienation, resistance, assimilation and so on

necessarily for the literature to be called as diasporic. There must be longing

and memory for home and the feeling of being exiled and displaced. Mahesh

Bharat Kumar Bhatt in his paper “Struggle to Acculturate in The Namesake: A

Comment on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Work as Diasporic Literature”, says that

Diaspora and diasporic literature in short mirrors a 'double vision’ at once of

'yearning backward' and 'looking forward' (3). And according to Shaleen Kumar

Singh, “Diaspora Literature involves an idea of a homeland, a place from

where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken

on account of economic compulsions. Basically Diaspora is a minority

community living in exile” (3).

As Alexander Pope has rightly said, ‘The proper study of mankind

is man’ in the same way the proper study of diasporic identity is diasporic

space. After discussing ‘diaspora’ there is one important concept associated

with it, and that is the concept of diasporic space. According to Avtar Brah, “the

concepts of diaspora, border, and politics of location are immanent, and

together they mark conceptual connections for historicised analyses of

contemporary trans/national movements of people, information, cultures,

commodities and capital. This site of immanence inaugurates a new concept,

namely diaspora space.” It is a central argument of her text that ‘diaspora

space’ (as distinct from the concept of diaspora) is ‘inhabited’ not only by

diasporic subjects but equally by those who are constructed and represented

as ‘indigenous’. As such, the concept of diaspora space foregrounds the

“entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’” (16).

Thus diasporic space comes into existence after the phenomenon of diaspora.

Diasporic space is created by both psychological and physical things. Place

and identity are a combination of lived existence and social construction;

therefore it has been argued that the social is geographically constructed,

simultaneity of time and space/place constitutes identity. Diasporic space

involves a concept of home and homeland, a concept of belonging to a

particular culture and community.

xv

Henri Lefebvre classified space in three categories: “social space,

physical space, and mental space” (14). He argued that social space is

produced by various economic and political means; that physical space is

empty or void; and that mental space is entirely abstract. Lefebvre’s ideas on

space are driven in part by a Marxist approach to the urbanisation of the

European landscape; he understood the ‘commercial revolution’ of the high

Middle Ages to be a sort of precursor to a more intrusive form of capitalism

which marked out urban space as a ‘tool of terrifying power’ (268). Although

Lefebvre’s characterisation of the medieval urban landscape has been

significantly nuanced in recent years, his overall insistence that historical

change can be tracked through spatial understandings and forms has

continued to stimulate what has come to be known as ‘the spatial turn’

(Goonewardena, et al. 27) in histories of the pre-modern world.

The home is not only something which is physical or made up of

concrete objects, like rooms of a house, furniture and all that, in which people

live, but home is more than a physical thing. It is something related to

memories, privacy, security etc, which a man can’t find anywhere in the world.

A man feels an attachment and belongingness towards his home. Migration to

other countries makes one lose his home. Immigrants think of their previous

homeland, they are nostalgic and aspire for home, even if they occupy a space

in foreign land but they spend their whole lives to transform this space into a

place. These immigrants hang in between two worlds, one is their homeland

and the other is the host land, they actually belong to none but desire for both.

The diasporic people are lost between two spaces and two cultures; wherever

they live they aspire for the other. This living off in between the two spaces is

called third space by Homi K. Bhabha. Third space, or lived space is therefore

a different way of thinking, “Third space is practised and lived rather than

simply being material (conceived) or mental (perceived). This focus on the

lived world does seem to provide theoretical groundwork for thinking about a

politics of place based on place as lived, practical and inhabited space”

(Cresswell 38).

Diaspora is not only a political or geographical issue, it does not deal

only with the problem of crossing borders but it is very much concerned with

xvi

social and cultural values, memory, past homeland etc. Diaspora is a broader

concept, which is discussed in political science, Literature, Geography and

Anthropology. According to Bhatt, “The approaches to the study of the Indian

diaspora should go beyond the barriers of the disciplinary boundaries”.

Diasporic people are always in a kind of pull and push by two spaces. Pull

means attracting feature of the host country because of the availability of job

opportunities and push from the homeland because of the lack of these

opportunities and sometimes because of the reason of social, political and

ethnic unrest. After living in host country for some time the diasporic people

yearn for home, for their old culture and for their own community. If all these

things are not possible to get in alien land still they try to maintain whatever

they can. They try to create a locale of their own by celebrating religious

festivals, by following their culture, by wearing their dress, by speaking their

own language and a sense of belongingness towards their own community

members. Turning a space into a place is both a psychological and physical

process. The present work shows the relation of an individual with his home.

The concept of diasporic space is related to emotions and feelings of an

individual. As Homi K. Bhabha says in Location of Culture, “the characteristics

of a particular diaspora can change over time; they are temporal, transitional,

and translational” (224).

New migrations create new displacements and hence new diasporas.

Border crossing is an important idea related with diaspora. In the context of a

proliferation of new border crossings the language of ‘borders’ and of

‘diaspora’ acquires a new currency. The concept of border has changed in last

few decades; it has become more of a psychological and abstract

phenomenon than of a physical thing, borders are created in the minds of

people. These border crossings are territorial, political, economic, cultural and

psychological. Amitav Ghosh has rightly said in his novel The Shadow Lines,

that borders are not natural they are not created by God, but have been

created by man for his own selfish interests. Borders are only the shadow

lines. Old grandmother in the novel says to Tridib that when she was a child

her perception about space, nation and borders was the same as that of the

other children: “I believed in the reality of space; I believed that distance

xvii

separates, that it is a corporeal substance; I believed in the reality of nations

and borders; I believed that across the border there existed another reality”

(77).

The word diaspora often invokes the imagery of traumas of separation

and dislocation, and this is certainly a very important aspect of the migratory

experience. But diasporas are also potentially the sites of hope and new

beginnings for many young professionals. Same is the case with characters of

three novels, namely Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli in The Namesake, Jasmine

and her husband Prakash Vijh in Jasmine, and Dimple’s parents in Born

Confused. They all moved to America with hopes of bright future for them and

for their children.

Avtar Brah argues that home for diasporic people is, “a mythic

place of desire” and therefore it is “a place of no return” (192). Home is a place

of fantasy, a utopian thing, and a place of dreamland. A home is a place of

belonging and a place to which one lays claim, a place which is one’s own, a

place where one can breathe openly. As people migrated to other lands

everything that is associated and every memory that is attached to home is

lost, thus those past memories haunt an individual, living a diasporic life means

living a homeless and restless life. Diaspora is a lifelong process, it is a one

way trip and there is no going back to one’s own world. Diaspora for second

generation is an inherited thing from ancestors; it is a kind of gift from parents

to their children.

Avtar Brah in Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities says

about the concept of home, space and place. She writes about home: “When

does a location become home? What is the difference between ‘feeling at

home’ and staking claim to a place as one’s own? It is quite possible to feel at

home in a place and, yet, the experience of social exclusions may inhibit public

proclamations of the place as home” (190).

As we see in the novel Born Confused and The Namesake how second

generation diasporic children are almost always in conflict with their first

generation diasporic parents. Although the first generation has spent more

time in the host country as compared to second generation, still they don’t

xviii

have too much attraction and affection for the host country, but they remain

attached to their homeland. They don’t think host country as their homeland.

Gogol, Sonia, Dimple, Moushumi and other second generation characters

prefer America to be called as their homeland, which is contrary to their

parents’ Indian choice.

Different generations of migrants view their host land differently. First

generation is emotionally and culturally more attached to their homeland as

compared to their second generation children, who try to re-orientate, to form

new social networks, and learn to negotiate new economic, political and

cultural realities with the people of host country. This difference in view points

creates different layers of diaspora in which old and new generations interact

with one another in a very complex and complicated way. Old memories and

new experiences influence their relationships with the host land and their

mother land.

P.K. Nayar in Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed gives a new

name for Avtar Brah’s concept of diasporic space, and he uses the term

‘Parergonal’ instead of diasporic space. Diaspora writings of a space are

concerned and mostly focused on the search for a ‘home’ away from

homelands, to discover and delineate a space of affections and mutual

dependency in a new land. This requires dialectic between intimate and

community spaces. Community spaces are parergonal spaces which frame

and constitute intimate spaces. This parergonal space decides the specific

location/residence/relationship of people. Parergonal space is thus

communal/community space and corresponds to what Avtar Brah has termed

‘diaspora space’. It is the space where race, gender, class intersect and

influence the location of the individual. (Nayar 169)

Tim Creswell in his Place: A Short Introduction, gives a clear difference

between Space and the Place and further talks about how to transform a

space into a place. He gives a good example of a college classroom for a

newly admitted student, when he/she enters a classroom one is confronted

with a particular area of floor space which is not unique and means nothing to

an individual beyond the provision of certain necessities of student life, but,

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This anonymous space has a history - it meant something to other people.

Now what do you do? A common strategy is to make the space say something

about you. You add your own possessions, rearrange the furniture within the

limits of the space, put your own posters on the wall, and arrange a few books

purposefully on the desk. Thus space is turned into place and that is ‘Your

Place’ (2). It is all about how to turn a space into a place. A place is a

meaningful location. So we will see how in all three novels, the characters try

to transform the space into the place, a place which will be their own territory.

Places are not always stationary. A ship, for instance, may become a special

kind of place for people who share it on a long voyage, even though its location

is constantly changing. For them that particular ship is a home even if the ship

is moving constantly and is not located in one place.

The political philosopher John A. Agnew has outlined three fundamental

aspects of place as a meaningful location: location, locale, and sense of place.

By location Agnew means “when we use place as a verb for instance (where

should I place this?), we are usually referring to some notion of location” (11),

by Locale he means, “a material setting for social relations- the actual shape of

place with in which people conduct their lives as individuals, as men or women

as white or black, straight or gay” (12). It is clear that places almost always

have a concrete form. By Sense of Place Agnew means, “the subjective and

emotional attachment people have to place” (12).

For many the most familiar example of place and its significance to

people is the idea of home. By transforming the Earth into home we create

places at a myriad of different levels. Tuan a Chinese-U.S geographer argues

that the making of places at all scales is seen as the production of a certain

kind of homeliness. At home people feel a sense of attachment and

rootedness. Home, is seen as a centre of meaning and a place of care, an

intimate place of rest where a person can withdraw from the hustle of the world

outside and have some degree of control over what happens within a limited

space. Home is where you can be yourself:

Home obviously means more than a natural of physical setting.

... home is a unit of space organized mentally and materially to satisfy

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a people's real and perceived basic biosocial needs and, beyond that,

their higher aesthetic-political aspirations. (qtd. in Cresswell 109)

Homelessness, as far as we know, has always been present in human

society from ancient to modern times, in one form or another. To be homeless

does not simply mean to be without what we the people of the contemporary

world for the most part would call a house or shelter, a concrete structure.

Homelessness is very much defined by a certain kind of disconnection from

particular forms of place. Here place means both a geographical location and a

clear place in a social hierarchy. Tim Cresswell puts it in Place: A Short

Introduction: “to be human is to be in place” (23).

Trans-nationalism is a process by which migrants, “through their daily

activities and social, economic and political relations, create fields that cross

national boundaries”. In fact, migrants live a “complex existence” that forces

them to confront and rework different hegemonic constructions of identity

developed in their home or new nation state(s) and “reterritorialize” their

practises as well as their identities” (Bill, Griffiths, and Helen). For example, In

The Namesake, Ashima and other Bengali immigrants feel de-territorialised in

the United States, they attempt to restructure the territory by starting to

celebrate Christian festivals in their own way. They celebrate American

festivals like Christmas and thanksgivings the way they would celebrate Hindu

festival like Dipawali and Durga Puja.

Tim Coles and Dallen J. Timothy in Tourism, Diasporas and Space, said

that diasporas is the community of people living together in one country who

“acknowledge that the old country- a nation often buried deep in language,

religion, custom or folklore-always has some claim on the loyalty and

emotions,” the statement suggests that diasporic people has more love,

affection and respect for their old culture which includes language, religion,

customs, dress, folklore, food etc. they have more intimation with the people of

their own community in a foreign land, e.g. in The Namesake the people of

Bengali community’s love for their language, religion culture and affection for

each other. Ganguli family invite other Bengali friends and then they celebrate

xxi

any festival. The diasporas are consciously or unconsciously attached with the

culture of their old country.

Kim Knott and Sean McLoughlin in Diasporas: Concepts,

Intersections, and Identities discuss the various concepts related to this unique

and highly complex process of migration. It tries to understand diaspora

through its historical transformation. They also try to figure out those certain

realities related to the diasporic-domestic space which in the past has been

hidden or to which much attention was not paid, and provides its readers with

the glimpse to understand the complex evolution of concepts of migration and

identity, as well as their crucial impact on shaping the direction of public and

academic debate today.

William Safran in his article “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths

of Homeland Return,” discusses about diaspora consciousness and myth of

homeland return. He also talks about different types of diaspora, and makes

comparison of various diasporas, e.g. resemblance in Armenian and Jewish

diaspora on the basis that both are religious diasporas, collective memory of

national independence in a circumscribed territory, and a remembrance of

betrayal, persecution, and genocide. Safran then compares many other

diaspora like Polish and Armenian, Maghrebi and Portuguese, Parsis and

Jews, and says that Parsis have no myth of return to homeland i.e. Iran, then

he talk about Gypsies whose situation he says is not quite comparable to that

of other diasporas: to a certain extent, that their homelessness is a feature of

their nomadic culture and the result of their refusal to be stay in one place.

Safran further says that Indian diaspora differs from that of the Jews and

Armenians: an Indian homeland has existed continuously, that homeland has

not been noted for encouraging an "ingathering" and Indian diaspora status

has not always been associated with political disability or even minority status.

Khachig Tölölyan in “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in

the Transnational Moment,” discusses the origin of the term ‘diaspora,’ shows

how the term diaspora has been first time used by translating Torah, by some

Jewish scholars. Khachig also mentions the use of the term ‘Diaspora’ first

time in English, he says that during (1910-1911) eleventh edition of The

Encyclopaedia Britannica has no entry for the word “Diaspora,” and how during

xxii

1958 Edition of the same identifies ‘diaspora’ as a ‘crystalline aluminium oxide

which, when heated, scatters flakes from its surface’. The 1968 Encyclopedia

of Social Sciences also fails to find “diaspora” useful to social science, and

does not list it. The 1979 edition of New Encyclopedia Britannica has no entry

for the term.

Robin Cohen states that, “a member’s adherence to a diasporic

community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with past

migration history and a sense of co-ethnicity with others of a similar

background.”

In Long-distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands, and Identities,

Zlatko Skrbis mentions that Central to discussions on diaspora is the notion of

homeland and home. He says, “It is important to view the homeland as a

constructed and imagined topos rather than a clearly defined entity. The very

idea of homeland has the power to evoke memories, intense emotions and put

into action more or less deeply learned attitudes”. Skrbis also explains that the

homeland is not just a territory but rather a romanticized and sometimes

mythical construction which often evokes feelings of longing and nostalgia.

David Morley says that in today’s postmodern, transnational world, “the

concept of home often remains as the un-interrogated anchor or alter ego.” For

most individuals the notion of home connotes stability and is anchored in

location, whereas diasporic individuals often have multiple homes such as the

physical home and the imagined home.

Naushad Umarsharif in “Diasporic Writing: A View” traces the causes of

diaspora and aims of studying the term diaspora. He asserts that globalisation,

political discrimination, ethnic cleansing and natural disasters are a major

cause of diaspora. And then he says that the aim of studying the term diaspora

is that one can examine how the diasporic experience can serve as a form of

trans-cultural critique, reading and understanding one culture’s space and time

in relation to another. One can also get an idea of doubleness in terms of

identity construction and the concept of creolisation. He also suggests that

comparative approaches or trans-disciplinary study is must for the post-

colonial literature and particularly for diasporic literature.

xxiii

Brent Hayes Edwards in The Practice of Diaspora: Literature,

Translation and the Rise of Black Internationalism, differentiates between the

notion of exile and diaspora. According to Brent diaspora is used to indicate a

state of dispersal resulting from voluntary migration and individual’s choice. In

this manner the term is not laced with a sense of violence, suffering or

punishment. While on the other hand the term exile connotes anguish, forced

homelessness, and the sense of things being not as they should be.

Ayman Abu-Shomar and Malcolm MacDonald in “Dialogic Spaces:

Diasporic Negotiation of Difference” said that Diasporic philosophy and

hybridity share a commonality; both the concepts deny the idea of essentialist

belonging, purity, and authenticity of cultures. Diasporic philosophy

emphasizes the idea of metaphoric homelessness as an escape from the

pleas for self-evidence and an authentic ‘I’. Similarly, hybridity takes up third

space as an inevitable ‘in-between’ position that rejects ‘fixity’, ‘fetishism’, and

‘authenticity’ of cultures. As such, both theories provide a theoretical

framework that perceives the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ as constructed on similar

grounds, and favours ‘nomadism’ and ‘dynamism’ over ‘belonging’ and ‘fixity.’

Thus to conclude this chapter, it can be said that there is not one clear

cut definition of the term diaspora. It is quite a complex concept and within it

diasporic space has an important place. Diasporic space plays an important

role in the creation and negotiation of diasporic identities and texts under study

show various dimensions of diasporic space. The second and third chapter

entitled ‘Diasporic Space in The Namesake’ and ‘Diasporic Space in Born

Confused and Jasmine’ respectively talk about the making of space and

occupying a place, how characters struggle and try to adjust themselves in an

alien country. The fourth chapter entitled ‘Comparative Analysis and

Conclusion’ presents the comparative study of the selected works. This

chapter also includes the conclusion part which culminates the overall work

and shows its relevance in literature and other fields.

xxiv

xxv

WORKS CITED

Agnew, John A. Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and

Society. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Print

Aschcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-colonial

Studies. Routledge, 1998. Print.

Bhabha, Homi K. Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Bhaskar, TLS. “Telugu Diaspora in the United States.” Diss. University of

Hyderabad, 2011.Print.

Bhatt, Mahesh Bharat Kumar. "Struggle to Acculturate in The Namesake: A

Comment on Jhumpa Lahiri's work as Diasporic Literature."

International Migration and Diapora Studies Project (2009): 7-20. Web.

7 Dec. 2013.

Blunt, Alison. “Geographies of Diaspora and Mixed Descent: Anglo-Indians in

India and Britain.” International Journal of Population Geography (2003):

n. pag. Web. 11 Aug. 2013.

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London:

Routledge, 1996. Print.

Cassidy-Welch, Megan. "Space and Place in Medieval contexts." Parergon 27

(2010): 1-12.Web. 19 Aug. 2013.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. New York: University of

Washington Press, 2008. Print.

Coles, Tim, and Dallen J. Timothy. Tourism, Diasporas and Space. London:

Routledge, 2002. Print.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing,

2004. Print.

xxvi

Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and

the Rise of Black Internationalism. New York: Harvard University Press,

2003. Print.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. New Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publishers, 1988.

Print.

Goonewardena, Kanishka, et al., eds. Space, Difference, Everyday Life. New

York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Knott, Kim, and Sean McLoughlin, eds.Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections,

Identities. London: Zed Books, 2010. Print.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson Smith.

Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1991. Print.

Majumdar, Anindyo J. “Internal Migration and Security of the State”.

Home Away from Home: Inland Movement of People in India. Ed.

Mahavir Singh. Kolkata: MAKAIAS, 2005. Web.

Mishra, Vijay. "(B)ordering Naipaul: Indenture History and Diasporic

Poetics." Diaspora: A Journal of transnational Studies 5.2 (1986):

189-37. Web. 7 Jan. 2014.

Morley, David. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. New York:

Routledge, 2000. Print.

Nayar, Promod K. Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York:

Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010. Print.

Rosa, Debora Cordeiro. Trauma, Memory and Identity in Five Jewish Novels

from the Southern Conel. Lanham: Lexington Books,2012. Print.

Ruchi, and Sandhya Saxena. “Indian Diaspora: Locations, Histories and

Strategies of Negotiation.” International Journal of Research in Social

Sciences and Humanities1 (2012): n. pag. Web. 15 July 2013.

xxvii

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991.

London: Random House, 1991. Print.

Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Society Myths of Homeland Return.”

Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1.1(1991): 83-99. Web. 3

Sep. 2013.

Shomar, Ayman Abu, and Malcolm MacDonald. “Dialogic Spaces: Diasporic

Negotiation of difference.” Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and

Societies 3 (2012): n. pag. Web. 5 May. 2013.

Singh, Mahavir, ed. Home Away from Home: Inland Movement of People in

India. New Delhi: Anamika Publishers, 2005. Print.

Singh, Shaleen Kumar. “Diaspora Literature: A Testimony of Realism.” Online

Journal of Kashmiri and Diasporic Writing 8 (2008): n. pag. Web. 3 Jan.

2014.

Skrbiš, Zlatko. Long-distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands, and

Identities. New York: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1999. Print.

Tölölyan, Khachig. “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the

Transnational Movement.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies

5 (1996):3-36. Web. 7 Sep. 2013.

Umarsharif, Naushad. “Diasporic Writing: A View.” King Abdulaziz University.

Web. 18 Oct. 2013.

xxviii

CHAPTER 2

Diaporic Space in The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the most eminent writers of Indian

Diaspora. Her works deal with the themes of immigration, displacement, issues

of identity, cultural clashes, human relations and issues of women. Diasporic

writers are those writers who live outside their homeland and write about the life

and experiences of diasporic people. It is not necessary that all works of

immigrant people can be categorized as diasporic literature, but diaspora

literature involves the notion of homeland, border, a place where the

displacement occurs, and character’s desire and yearning for homeland.

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in 1969 to Bengali Indian parents in London and at the

age of three she moved to United States, and grew up in Kingston, Rhode

Island. Lahiri did B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989, M.A. in

English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and

Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. Lahiri wrote two

collections of short stories entitled Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and

Unaccustomed Earth (2008), and two novels The Namesake (2003) and The

Lowland (2013).

The Namesake is a story about an immigrant family from India, Ashima

and Ashoke Ganguli and their two children Gogol and Sonia and their

resettlement in America, and their struggle to maintain their Indianness on

American land. The novel covers a period of about thirty years of its characters'

life, starting in 1968 and ending in 2000. In the beginning, readers are

introduced to Ashima Ganguli who is cooking food in her kitchen in America.

Then after some months in Massachusetts she is admitted to hospital for

delivery. Ashima gives birth to a baby boy who is named Gogol. When Ashoke

xxix

is sitting in the hospital waiting hall, he remembers the train accident of 1961,

when he was travelling from Calcutta to Jamshedpur to visit his grandfather to

collect some books. The train derailed and fell into a nearby field, most of the

passengers died and Ashoke was saved because of a book, ‘The Short Stories

of Nikolai Gogol’ he was holding before the accident, and that is the reason of

naming his son Gogol. During Gogol’s rice ceremony (Annaprasan) when he is

six months old, his parents invite all Bengali people and act like a family. After

six months, the Gangulis plan for a tour to visit India but unfortunately Ashima's

father dies of heart attack. Ashima becomes very distressed and they leave for

Calcutta six weeks earlier than the fixed time.

As the plot moves forward Ashoke and Ashima feel the need to have their

own house and during 1971 Ganguli family leaves University apartment and

decides to buy their own house on Pemberton Road. When Gogol is admitted to

kindergarten, his parents want to change his name to Nikhil so they tell the

principal, Mrs. Lapidus, that Gogol should be called by his good name, ‘Nikhil.’

But Gogol’s name is not changed because the principal tells his parents that he

himself preferred to be called as Gogol. After some time Ashima gives birth to a

girl child who is named as Sonia.

On Gogol’s fourteenth birthday, Ashoke presents to him a book The Short

Stories of Nikolai Gogol as a birthday gift. Ashoke thinks of telling Gogol about

the train accident that made him choose the name Gogol, but stops because he

realizes that Gogol cannot understand yet. Gogol keeps the book away because

neither does he like Nikolai Gogol nor his own name which was given to him by

his parents. The next year, Ashoke and Ashima decide to go to Calcutta for

eight months. Gogol begins his junior year of high school, where he comes to

know about Nikolai Gogol and his short stories. Mr. Lawson taught the English

class and assigns the class to read, The Overcoat.

Before joining Yale College, Gogol goes to court and changes his name

to Nikhil. Then after some time he has an affair with a girl named Ruth, but this

relation does not go long and they break up, while she is studying abroad at

Oxford. At the next Thanksgiving occasion, Ashoke tells his son about train

accident and the origin of his name. At the age of twenty six Gogol finishes from

xxx

Yale College and gets a job of architect and shifts to his own rented apartment

in New York. Gogol has an affair with another girl named Maxine Ratliff,

daughter of Lydia and Gerald. Gogol spends most of his time with Maxine and

her parents in their house.

Gogol remains away from his parents for a long time, and visits home

after weeks and sometimes after a month. One day while Ashima is at home

Ashoke called her on phone and informs her that he is in hospital, because of a

stomach pain. She is very worried and after some period comes to know that

her husband has died because of a massive heart attack. Then Ashima informs

her son Gogol and her daughter Sonia. Gogol goes to Ohio to identify his

father's dead body. The next morning, he reaches Boston to be with his mother

and his sister Sonia. A year after Ashoke's death, Gogol breaks up with Maxine

and on his mother’s saying Ashoke makes up with an Indian origin girl

Moushumi Mazoomdar. Both get married and live together for some time, till

Gogol came to know about Moushumi’s affair with her old lover Dimitri, and the

relation comes to an end with a divorce.

After the death of Ashoke, the whole family scatters into parts, Ashima

decids to sell her house at Pemberton Road and to spend six months in India

and six months in the America. Sonia is getting married with Ben and Gogol is

living alone after getting divorce from Moushumi. At the end of the novel before

flying to India Ashima arranges for a party and invites all Bengali friends to her

house. Gogol, Sonia and Ben are also present in this last function; Gogol was

received from railway station by Sonia and Ben. Guests, mostly Bengali friends

arrive and Gogol goes back to his old bedroom and finds, ‘The Short Stories of

Nikolai Gogol’ his father had given him on his 14th birthday. He starts reading

The Overcoat, and in the mean time his mother enters in the room and the novel

comes to an end.

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the prominent writers of Indian diasporic

fiction, who has written many collections of short stories and novels dealing with

the theme of second generation diaspora. The Namesake is a story about the

struggle of making space in a foreign land. Sinha and Ataullah in Migration: An

Interdisciplinary Approach write that an, “Uneven distribution of population and

xxxi

resources, unbalanced utilisation of resources, and variations in economic and

cultural developments have influenced the mobility of men from one region to

another” (1). It is this unbalanced utilisation of resources and variation in

economic developments in India that have forced Ganguli family to migrate from

India to America. They migrated because of economic purposes, because of

better future perspective on American land.

The Ganguli family is the microcosm of Indian immigrants in

America and other countries. Their condition resembles the condition of present

day Indian diasporas. The interesting question in the novel is to what extent and

in what forms boundaries are maintained by first and second generation

diasporas. John A. Armstrong in “Mobilized and proletarian diasporas” says that

Boundary Maintenance is the third constitutive criterion for diaspora. He defines

Boundary-maintenance as involving the preservation of a distinctive identity vis-

a-vis a host society. Boundaries can be maintained by deliberate resistance to

assimilation through self-forced endogamy or other forms of self-segregation

(394-395). So we can find in the novel how Ganguli family and other Indian

characters maintain a balance of both ‘Boundary Maintenance’ and ‘Boundary

Erosion’ sometimes they assimilate and sometimes they give a strong

resistance to American culture.

The plot of the novel revolves round Ganguli family and shows how much

nostalgic the family is from the beginning of their landing in America. By reading

this book one comes to know how much they wish and aspire for home and for

creating their own domestic and social space around them. Lahiri shows in this

novel the importance of home, and what it is to be in America and still can’t

become an American. The concept of space is an important one throughout the

novel. For Gangulis’ there is no difficulty in maintaining the domestic space by

being stick to their own Indian culture. Inside their house they maintain their

Indian manners, language, culture and customs: “Ashima never thinks of her

husband’s name when she thinks of her husband” (2). The condition of Ashima

is the real portrayal of the condition of women in diaspora. She cries when she

is alone at home, her isolation and loneliness haunts her: “she wonders if she is

the only Indian in the hospital,” (4) but a gentle jerk of baby from the body

reminds her that she is not alone. In hospital she is more painful not because of

labour but because of motherhood in a foreign land:“that it was happening so far

xxxii

from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved, had made it more

miraculous still” (6).

The acquaintances with other Indian people in America are substitutes for

the people who really ought to be surrounding them like their grandparents or

parents or uncle or aunt at her side at the time of the Gogol’s birth. Silvia

Albertazzi in her essay “Translation, Migration and Diaspora in Salman

Rushdie’s fiction” stresses that a migrant is compelled to experience the world

through imagination (qtd. in Dwivedi 2). Same is the case with Ashima who is

most of the times in novel lost in her past, in hospital the memories of India

haunted her, and even in her own apartment she keeps thinking and imagining

about Bengal. She keeps imagining how it would have different if Gogol was

born in India, how family, friends, relatives and neighbours all would have

present in the house. When sitting alone in her apartment she keeps imagining

about Indian time and American time and counts it on her fingers. Eagerly

wating for letters from her parents, Jasmine “keeps her ears trained, between

the hours of twelve and two, for the sound of the postman’s footsteps on the

porch, followed by the soft click of the mail slot in the door,” (36).

They were shocked when they come to know that they cannot leave

hospital without naming their baby and that baby can’t be released without a

birth certificate, which is a sign of clash between traditional bound Indian

cultures and the advanced American society. The novelist shows how the

characters are more curious than anything else of being at home, in the start of

the novel when Gogol was born his parents felt a need to have a home of their

own, Ashima sighs in hospital: “she can’t help but pity him. She has never

known of a person entering the world so alone so deprived” (25). The women

feel more uncomfortable and suffer more as compared to men in a foreign land.

Ashima compels her husband to go back to their Indian home: “I ‘m saying hurry

up and finish your degree …I don’t want to raise Gogol alone in this country. It’s

not right. I want to go back” (33).As Brah has rightly said that a home for

diasporic people is, “a mythic place of desire” and therefore it is “a place of no

return” (Brah 192).

xxxiii

To put Gogol to sleep Ashima sings him the Bengali songs which

“Ashima’s mother had sung to her” (35). They create their own imaginary world

in America as if their home is in America, the circle of Bengali acquaintances

grow day by day. The families visit to one another’s homes on Sunday

afternoons, and talk about India, Indian movies, politics and various other

issues. On the occasion of Gogol’s Annaprasan, all Bengalis came to the house

of Ashoke, and celebrated it in a pure Bengali way. Ashima’s eyes were filled

with tears, she can’t help wishing her own brother and her parents were present

to feed Gogol, they ask Dilip Nandi to play the part of Ashima’s brother, and they

give gifts to Gogol, this is affection with one’s own community in foreign country,

a feeling of belongingness and oneness with the group.

Ashima knows well what it is to live in America, she has no hope of

coming out of this trauma, because once a diaspora is always a diaspora with

no end and no hope of returning back to ones homeland: “For being a foreigner

Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy-a perpetual wait, a

continuous feeling out of sorts” (49).

Khachig Tölölyan in his article, “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless

Power in the Transnational Moment,” focuses more on the group’s

preservation of their homeland’s culture in a host society. So did the Indians in

America, they try to preserve their homeland culture, if not fully but to a large

extent they give tough resistance to American culture. But instead they try to

create their own sphere, and own diasporic space. Every member of Ganguli

family is trying his/her level best to establish his/her own space in America,

and same is the case with Ashoke, there is no end to his joy when he is

recruited as an “assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at the university,

he is given his own office with his name etched on to a strip of black plastic by

the door” (48). For Ashoke this is not only an office, but more than that, it is the

only small world in America owned by Ashoke. This is his own space with his

own name and identity. What a sense of accomplishment it gives him to see

his name printed under “Faculty” in the university directory. After he got a job in

university, they desire for more, they are now ready to purchase a home of

their own. One evening after dinner, Gangulis set out in their car, Gogol in the

back seat, to look at houses for sale. They don’t look in the historic street

xxxiv

instead they look on ordinary roads. There were no Indians to that side but

only Americans. They learn the names of different architectural styles like

Cape, Saltbox, Raised ranch, Garrison etc. in the end they decided a two-story

newly built house, the writer says, “this is the only small patch of land to which

they lay claim” (51). As Cresswell in his book, Place: A Short Introduction, give

the reference of John Agnew who has outlined three fundamental aspects of

place as a ‘meaningful location’ Location, Locale, and Sense of Place. If we

take the example of Ashima Ganguli for her American home i.e. Pemberton

Road is only a kind of location and locale but for her sense of place is India, to

which she is emotionally attached. For Gogol America is a location, locale and

a sense of place. For some characters America is ‘Location,’ for some it values

as a ‘Locale’ and for some others it is a ‘Sense of Place.’ By location Agnew

means when place is used as a verb for instance (where should I place this?),

we are usually referring to some notion of location, by Locale he means “a

material setting for social relations- the actual shape of place with in which

people conduct their lives as individuals, as men or women as white or black,

straight or gay”. It is clear that places almost always have a concrete form. By

Sense of Place Agnew means “the subjective and emotional attachment

people have to place” (qtd in Cresswell 12).

Gogol is badly suffered more than any other character in the novel, and

his sufferings began with his birth in America, and with his coming to age he

was admitted in school there is a great problem and confusion with his name.

His parents decide that he will be named as Nikhil in school but at home he will

be Gogol. As a child he couldn’t understand what is happening with him but as

the time passes he comes to know that he has no identity of his own, he is

neither an American nor Indian, instead he is hanging in between the spaces.

From his childhood he is very sensible and serious, at the age of eleven when

he was taken on a school field trip of some historical intent to a graveyard; the

readers can see how much distressed Gogol was with the incident, he

understands that America doesn’t belong to him, neither does he belong to

America, he is an alien, neither he has any roots nor any future in America. All

the students are told to scamper between rows of the dead, and look for their

own names. Except Gogol everyone find his/her name like Smith, Collins, and

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Woods etc. But Gogol is mature enough to know that there is no Ganguli in this

graveyard. He is old enough and has proper senses that,“he himself will be

burned and his body will occupy no plot of earth, that no stone in America will

bear his name beyond life” (69). As is the case with Gogol’s parents, they don’t

find any solace and relief in America, Gogol is somewhat different from his

parents in the sense that to some extent he manages to adapt in America, but

for him it is very difficult to live in India. Almost both the places haunt the

characters. Gogol’s parents one day inform him that they all will be going to

Calcutta for eight months, “he dreads the thought of eight months without a

room of his own, without his records and his stereo” (79). Room, records and

stereo metaphorically represent that space which Gogol has made for himself in

America.

Once when talking with his girlfriend Ruth, he didn’t feel comfortable in

talking about his Indian origin parents: “He can’t imagine coming from such

parents, such a background he describes his own upbringing it feels bland by

comparison” (111). By this quote it can be said that Gogol doesn’t like India or

anything related to India, it pinches him when any one asks him about his origin,

and also he doesn’t like to talk about India that is why he did not join the Indian

Association. When Gogol’s father died he began to realize the loss of dear ones:

“He knows now the guilt that his parents carried inside, of arriving weeks,

sometimes months later when there was nothing left to do” (179). When he was

young he could not understand what it is for a young Bengali to get his head

shaved on his father’s death.

Ashoke went to America, the land of opportunities, confusion and conflict,

he went to earn money and want to become successful man in life but he didn’t

know that to make the dream come true he will lose everything what he has; he

lost his home, parents, relatives and also his homeland. In The Namesake the

Ganguli family makes journey from tradition bound life of Calcutta to their

troubled transformation into America. Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, after their

arranged marriage in India fly to America and settle together in Cambridge,

Massachusetts.

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The novel portrays the cultural dilemma faced by immigrants in foreign

land; Lahiri also shows that the immigrants in their passion of being attached to

their own cultural beliefs and customs gradually imbibe and assimilate the

cultural ways of the host country people. Their own children became bilingual

and bicultural, and face cultural dilemmas and displacement more. They

became culturally hybrid and there was cultural transformation. Gogol speaks

words in two languages, at home he speaks Bengali with his parents and

outside he speaks English. After the legal formalities, when Ashima flies alone

to be with her husband with a heavy heart and lots of instructions from her

family members and relatives. The instructions of what to do and what not to do

in America shows how much concerned the Ashima’s family is about that she

should not lose her identity and Indian culture, same kind of concern was shown

by Ashima and Ashoke towards the preservation of their children’s identity in

America. They also advised them in the same way what to wear, what to eat

and in which language they should talk.

Robin Cohen rightly remarks: “a member’s adherence to a diasporic

community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their

past migration history” (ix). And this kind of affection and adherence can be

found among Indian characters in the novel towards their Indian friends and

culture. All Indians live like a family in America; it doesn’t matter whether they

are from Calcutta, Punjab, Bihar or any other state of India, they are from India

that is enough, even at one time a Bangladeshi driver smiled at Gogol because

of the feeling of oneness. Bengali families share their joys and sorrows with

each other, and they create a world of their own. They don’t have any blood

relation with each other but they are culturally bound: “Every weekend, it seems,

there is a new home to go to, a new couple or young family to meet. They all

came from Calcutta, and for this reason alone they are friends” (38). They try to

preserve their own culture, religion, rituals and traditions and to speak their own

language. Gogol is living in the in-between space and struggling to balance the

two different worlds. At home he is an Indian and to outside world he pretends to

be an American. Gogol is hanging in between two cultures, the Indian and the

American and don’t know where to go.

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One weekend on a trip with his parents Gogol mistakenly refers New

Haven as his home: “sorry, I left it at home,” (108) he says when his father asks

if he remembered to buy the Yale decal to paste to the rear window of car.

Ashima is annoyed by Gogol’s statement, that she was frustrated all day: “‘Only

three months and listen to you’ she says, telling him that even after twenty years

in America, she still can’t bring herself to refer to Pemberton Road as home”

(108). No doubt Ashima spent half of her life in America but she still does not

consider herself as an American. As David Morley and Kevin Robins in Spaces

Of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

explain that in today’s postmodern, transnational world, for most individuals the

notion of home connotes stability and is anchored in location, whereas diasporic

individuals often have multiple homes such as the physical home and the

imagined home. And in novel The Namesake too Ashoke and Ashima have

multiple homes, they too have physical home and imagined home, former in

America and later in India. The experience of violence, loss, marginalisation or

dispossession can trigger, in Michael Brown’s words: “the search for a new

place to call home: it means having to relocate oneself, to leave home and

reconfigure it elsewhere” (qtd. in Andrew Gorman-Murray and Robyn Dowling).

Home, in this sense, understood as an ambiguous site of both belonging and

alienation, is not a fixed and static location which ‘grounds’ an essential and

unchanging sense of self. In this novel Ashoke and Ashima went in search of

new home in America because of their dispossession from homeland i.e. India

and exclusion from American dominant culture.

In most part of the novel Gogol keeps himself aloof from his ancestral

culture, he doesn’t wish to be considered as an Indian, neither he wishes to

have any Indian friends in school or in college. One day he attends a panel

discussion about Indian novels written in English. He feels obliged to attend; he

is bored by the panellists, who keep referring to something called “marginality,”

as if it were some sort of medical condition: “Technologically speaking, ABCDs

are unable to answer the question ‘where are you from? The sociologists on the

panel declare” (118). Gogol has never heard the term ABCD. He eventually

gathers that it stands for American-born confused deshi. He knows that deshi, a

generic word for “countryman,” means “Indian,” knows that his parents and all

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their friends always refer to India simply as desh. But Gogol never thinks of India

as desh. He thinks of it as an outsider as an American. For him India is not

same India what it is for his parents. Living with Ratliffs reminds Gogol that he

and his family is lacking something, and that lacking is ‘home’. At one time when

Pamela a middle-aged woman asks Gogol, “at what age he moved to America

from India” He tries a lot to motivate her that he is am America “I am from

Boston,” but she do not agree with his answer. “But you are Indian. I’d think the

climate wouldn’t affect you, given your heritage” (157). Lydia also takes Gogol’s

side to save him from the conversation: “Pamela Nick’s American. He was born

here”. But Lydia herself was not sure was he really an American. “Weren’t you?”

(157).

After the death of Ashoke Ganguli the whole of the Ganguli Family got

scattered everyone to his/her own way, Ashima’s condition is very pitiable she

has never been so isolated in her life. It appears as if the family does not have

existed at all, they disappear in the cloud. Whatever the space Gangulis has

created throughout their lives in America has all vanished:

She has time to do things like this now that she is alone. Now

there is no one to feed or entertain or talk to for weeks at a time. At

forty-eight she has come to experience the solitude that her husband

and son and daughter already know, and which they claim not to

mind…she hates returning in the evenings to a dark, empty house,

going to sleep on one side of the bed and waking up on another.(Lahiri

161)

Ashima’s journey from Calcutta to America is very tragic, at the age

of about twenty one she moved with her husband to America and throughout her

life she keeps on moving from one place to another, one can only imagine such

a tragic life. Her whole life is a journey: “in her own life Ashima has lived in five

houses: her parent’s flat in Calcutta, her in-laws’ house for one month, the

house they rented in Cambridge, living below the Montgomerys, the faculty

apartment in campus, and, lastly, the one they own now. One hand five homes.

A lifetime in a fist” (167). Women characters suffer more as compared to men.

Women are twice dislocated first when they get married and had to live with a

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stranger in a strange house which is not known to them, and second from there

migrated to an alien country leaving their parent’s and going with a man whom

they knew only from some days or months.

Whether it is the birth or death ceremony, Gangulis try their best to

celebrate it in Indian tradition, after Ashoke’s death, it is worth noting how the

family practiced all the Hindu rituals and traditions. For ten days they only eat

dal and rice and no meat or hamburgers. And on the eleventh day they invite

their friends to mark the end of mourning period. This shows how the Gangulis’

inner world or their domestic space is maintained. Ashima didn’t want to leave

America after the death of her husband as she want to live where her husband

lived and where her husband’s memories are attached: “She refuses to be so far

from the place where her husband made his life, the country in which he died”

(183). Ashoke Ganguli when alive was also sure that there is no other place

other than America to go to, there is no way back, that is why he told his son

Gogol, “Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a

place where there was nowhere left to go” (187).

Moushumi is also an important character in the novel, she is a different

character her roots are very different from Gogol. Her parents had migrated from

India to England then from England to America. Leaving England was as painful

for Moushumi as leaving India for her parents. As Moushumi’s parents miss their

Indian home so Moushumi misses her home in England. For most time in

America she tried to maintain her British accent: “She speaks with nostalgia of

the years her family had spent in England, living at first in London, which she

barely remembers, and then a brick semi-detached house in Croydon, with

rosebushes in front” (212). Cultural hybridity is one of the important outcomes of

diaspora, not only does the emigrants establish their own culture but also

influence the host culture also. Sonia got married with an American, but their

marriage ceremony was celebrated in a mix of Bengali and American way,

which we can say a hybridity of cultures, “Enough of their friends children had

married Americans, had produced pale, dark haired, half American

grandchildren…” (216). But sometimes the two cultures are in conflict with each

other as is shown in the novel when Moushumi had a break up with Graham

because of their belonging to two different cultures. Graham simply did not like

xl

the Indian way of life, after he came back from Calcutta he complained

Moushumi about the Indian culture and she did not like his way of talking about

her parental culture:

A few weeks before the wedding, they were out to dinner with

friends, getting happily drunk, and she heard Graham talking about their

time in Calcutta. To her surprise, he was complaining about it,

commenting that he found it taxing, found the culture repressed…there

was nothing to drink, imagine dealing with fifty in-laws without alcohol. I

couldn’t even hold her hand on the street…(217).

Moushumi, daughter of Shubir and Rina, is a second generation Bengali

born in London and raised in America’s multicultural society. Though Moushumi

practices her native culture, tradition, custom and values within the confines of

her home, yet she belongs more to the New World as far as her habits and

behaviour are concerned. Her education at New York University and frequent

visits to England and France for her research work have depleted her native

cultural consciousness and left her doubtful about India and America. This

scepticism about her Indian, English or American origins raises the identity issue

which she admits when she said to Gogol: “She had hated moving to America,

that she had held on to her British accent for as long as she could. For some

reason, her parents feared America much more than England, perhaps because

of its vastness, or perhaps because in their minds, it had less of a link to India”

(212).

But to preserve the little ethnicity left in her, she decides to marry an

Indian immigrant, Gogol, in a Hindu ritualistic way because she “had always

been admonished not to marry an American” (212-213), and she never wanted

to produce “pale, dark haired, half-American grandchildren for her parents”

(216). This marriage is Moushumi’s attempt at building a bridge between two

cultures that leads to their congruence and unity: “Always and every differently

the bridge escorts the lingering and hastening ways of men to and fro, so that

they may get to other banks . . . The bridge gathers as a passage that crosses”

(Bhabha 5). Thus, this bridge across cultures (the ethnic and host culture) is an

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attempt by Moushumi to develop a dialogic relation that further leads to the

cultural engagement.

The only small portion of American world occupied by Ganguli

family is destroyed after they sold their house to an American family, because

the house was renovated and all the memories associated with Gangulis

disappeared from there. The house in which they have lived for past twenty-

seven years, which they have occupied longer than any other in their life, has

been recently sold:

The buyers are an American family, the walkers, a young

professor new to the university where Ashoke used to work. The

walkers are planning renovation. They will knock down the wall between

the living and the dining rooms,…listening to their plans, Ashima had felt

a moment’s panic, a protective instinct, wanting to retract her offer,

wanting the house to remain as it’s always been, as her husband has

last seen it. (275)

Ashima has decided to spend six months of her life in India, and six

months in America. It is a solitary, somewhat premature version of the future

she and her husband had planned when he was alive. In Calcutta, Ashima will

live with her younger brother Rana in a spacious flat in Salt Lake. There she will

have a room, the first in her life intended for her exclusive use. In spring and

summer she will return to the northeast, dividing her time among her son, her

daughter, and her close Bengali friends. True to the meaning of her name

(Ashima means without borders), she will be without borders, without a home of

her own, a resident of everywhere and nowhere. As the thought of leaving

America and moving to India comes to Ashima’s mind it haunts her. She feels

lonely in a moment, horribly, permanently alone, and quickly, goes away from

the mirror, and shed tears for her husband. She feels overwhelmed by the

thought of the journey she is about to take:

To the city that was once home and is now in its own way foreign.

She feels both impatience and indifference for all the days she still must

live, for something tells her she will not go quickly as her husband did.

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For thirty-years she missed her life in India … now she will miss the

country in which she had grown to know and love her husband. (279)

Ashima finally comes to realize that the house on Pemberton Road can

never be her own, and it has never been her home. Pemberton house has only

been a structure of four walls and nothing more than that, now she began to feel

that it is she who is responsible for this world which she has created, which is

everywhere around her, now the time has come to pack up, give away, and

throw away thrown out everything bit by bit. When Ashima is preparing to leave

for India the scene is very painful, she packs her luggage and distributed the

household items to neighbours and other Bengali families and furniture to her

daughter Sonia: “And then the house will be occupied by strangers, and there

will be no trace that they were ever there, no house to enter, no name in the

telephone directory. Nothing to signify the years his family has lived here, no

evidence of the effort, the achievement it had been” (281).

The cultural dilemmas experienced by Gangulis and their American born

children, the spatial, cultural and emotional dislocations suffered by them in their

effort to settle “home” in a foreign land did not prove to be a successful mission.

They get scattered and dispersed, and finally lost in the winds as if they never

came to America. Thus we see in the novel how characters struggle to make

space, to try to make a location, locale and a sense of place, some with India

and others with America.

WORKS CITED

Armstrong, John A. "Mobilized and Proletarian Diaspora." American Political

Science Association 70.2 (1976): 393-408. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.

Bhabha, Homi K. Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London:

Routledge, 1996. Print.

xliii

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Print.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing,

2004. Print.

Dwivedi, Vivek Kumar. "Literature of the Indian Diaspora." Ed. O.P Dwivedi.

Transnational Literature 4.2 (2012): n. pag. Web. 2 Feb. 2014.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

Print.

Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic

Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Murray, Andrew Gorman, and Robyn Dowling."Home.” M/C Journal: A Journal

of Media and Culture 10.4 (2007): n. pag. Web. 2 Sep. 2013.

Sinha, Vishwa Nath Prasad, and Md Ataullah. Migration: An Interdisciplinary

Approach. Delhi: Seema Publications, 1987. Print.

Tölölyan, Khachig. “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the

Transnational Movement.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 5

(1996): 3-36. Web. 7 Aug. 2013.

CHAPTER 3

Diasporic Space in Born Confused and Jasmine

Bharati Mukherjee, an Indian born American novelist is an

influential writer of diasporic literature who was born on July 27, 1940 in

Calcutta (Kolkata). Mukherjee is both a novelist and a short-story writer, and

she reflects in most of her works Indian culture and immigrant experience. She

attended an anglicized Bengali school from 1944 to 1948. After three years

abroad, the family returned to India. Mukherjee did B.A in 1959 from University

of Calcutta, M.A from University of Baroda in 1961, and then she entered

xliv

University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, earning a master’s degree in Fine Arts in

1963 and a Ph.D. in 1969. She then moved to the United States in 1980 and

began teaching at the university level. She became a U.S. citizen in 1989 and

that year accepted a position teaching postcolonial and world literature at the

University of California at Berkeley.

Mukherjee’s works include, The Tiger’s

Daughter (1972), Wife (1975), her first short story collection

Darkness (1985), The Middleman and Other Stories (1988) Jasmine (1989)

and The Holder of the World (1993), Wanting America: Selected

Stories (1995), Leave It to Me (1997), Desirable Daughters (2002), The Tree

Bride (2004), Miss New India (2011), The Management of Grief (1988),Days

and Nights in Calcutta (1977) and her other non-fiction editions are The

Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987),

Political Culture and Leadership in India (1991) etc.

Bharati Mukherjee’s dominant theme in her writings is to portray

the condition of Indian immigrants in North America, with particular attention to

changes taking place in South Asian Women in a new world. Jasmine (1989) is

a novel about a young Indian woman in the United States who, while trying to

adapt to the American way of life, changes her identities several times.

Jasmine, the title character and narrator of the novel, is born in 1965 in an

Indian village called Hasnapur in Jalandhar. She tells her story as a twenty-

four-year-old pregnant widow, living in Iowa with her crippled lover, Bud

Ripplemeyer. The novel is written in a kind of flash back technique, Jasmine

presently living in America and narrating her childhood when she was in India.

The novel starts and Jasmine is narrating about her childhood life in Hasnapur,

the novel begins with the phrase, ‘‘Lifetimes ago ...” Jasmine is seven years

old. Jasmine’s widowhood and exile was forecasted by an astrologer under a

banyan tree in Hasnapur. The astrologer’s forecast came to true and

Jasmine’s first husband Prakash Vijh was killed in a bomb blast by Khalsa

Lions, and then she moved to America to fulfill her dead husband’s dream. And

during her journey to America faced many hardships, even she murdered a

man who raped her in an abandoned hotel. Lillian Gordan an American woman

helped her to get a job. Jasmine spends some time in Lillian’s house, and then

xlv

some time in Devender Vadhera’s house. Professor Vadhera helped her to get

a green card by which she became a legal immigrant to work in America. Then

Jasmine got the job of a day mother for a girl Duff and fell in love with her

employer, Tylor. As the murderer of her husband appeared in California, she

left Taylor and went to New York where she met Bud Ripplemeyer, who is a

middle aged banker and Jasmine fell in love with this man and also get

pregnant with him. And finally at the end of novel she returns back to her old

lover Taylor in California.

Discussing the pressures to migrate, Kingsley Davis writes, "...

pressure to emigrate has always been great enough to provide a stream of

emigrants much larger than the actual given opportunities" (qtd. in Jain 8). So

according to the statement of Davis, it is the pressure from the homeland

which forces an individual to migrate to other country. And this pressure can be

in any form like lack of economic opportunities, political disturbance or ethnic

violence etc. The diasporic people view the utopian side of the receiving

society, but in actuality there are more sufferings and less opportunity for

immigrants in a foreign country. Jasmine may have the same concept about

America when she leaves India. Jasmine is an important piece of writing of

Indian diasporic fiction. The novel is impregnated with the discourse of

diaspora. We can trace how an Indian character Jasmine wandering in the

novel, matches the Homi K. Bhabha’s notions of ‘un-homeliness’, ‘in-between

space,’ and ‘hybrid identity’. She is an illegal immigrant with fake documents,

travelled such a long and tough journey alone. She is very different and unique

from other female characters of Indian diasporic fiction. She is not like Ashima

of The Namesake, who is every time melancholic about her Indian home,

Jasmine is in that way opposite to her personality. Jasmine is a homeless

wanderer and without any space of her own, she is like a ghost hanging in

spaces. She is never settled in her life once she left India and went to America.

From start to the end she has gone through many transformations, her

husband Prakash Vijh transforms her from simple village girl Jyoti to city girl

Jasmine, Bud calls her Jane, Lillian calls her Jazzy, and Taylor called her

Jase. Her transformation is the real transformation undergone almost all

diasporic women characters. Jasmine once said "Jyoti, Jasmine: I shuttled

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between identities ... I felt suspended between worlds" (69-70). She is hovering

between Indian and American world.

According to Brah, Diaspora space is the point at which

boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, between native and the immigrants, of

belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are contested. The diaspora space

is the site where the native is as much a diasporian as the diasporian is the

native (205). So then can we say in Mukherjee’s novel, American characters

mentioned are as much diasporic as the Indian character Jasmine? As soon as

Jasmine arrives in America she tried to make her own space and own world,

she once said, “I have given Bud a new trilogy to contemplate: Brahma,

Vishnu, and Shiva. And he has lent me his: Musial, Brock, and Gibson” (8).

This sharing of things between Bud and jasmine is enough clue to say that,

from Bud’s side also there is an effort to make his space to assimilate with

Jasmine; same is the case with Taylor, Duff and Du.

A brief note on the concepts like 'ethnicity', 'ethnic group' and

forms of assimilation will help to understand better the theoretical approaches

towards Indian diaspora and diasporic space. Immigrants from a common

place usually come together and create their own distinct ethnic groups to

facilitate cultural conformity and survival in the host societies. They develop a

distinctive cultural and social life, which is entirely different from that of the

dominant culture. Most scholars equate ethnic group with immigrant group.

One thing is very clear in the novel, Jasmine did not care for what John

Armstrong called ‘Border Maintenance’ which means she did not remain aloof

from American culture, but instead she assimilated with it to a large extent, she

was not nostalgic about her homeland, she did not want to go back to India,

she wanted to forget everything about her past, that is why she once said, “for

them experience leads to knowledge, or else it is wasted, for me experience

must be forgotten, or else it will kill” (33). What are the experiences she is so

much scared of? These experiences are her past, the memories of migration

of her parents from Lahore to Hasnapur, memories of her dead husband

(Prakash), memories of being raped by Half-Face and memories of losing her

own world i.e., India. Jasmine is a drifter, a perpetual wanderer who is not at

home anywhere but looking for home everywhere and finding it nowhere. The

xlvii

exile sensibility manifests in almost all major works of Bharati Mukherjee

making her a great diasporic writer.

Lillian Gordon suggested Jazzy to shed all her Indianness and try

to become American, because Jazzy was an illegal immigrant with fake

travelling documents and nobody should be able to recognize her as Indian

and caught by Police. Lillian to jazzy, “Now remember if you walk and talk

American, they will think you were born here” (133). And Jazzy do the same by

shedding her Indian looking typicality, Jazzy said, “Time to try out my American

talk and walk” (133). Jasmine sometimes feel that she is like a stone hurtling

through diaphanous mist, unable to grab hold, unable to slow herself, yet

unwilling to abandon the ride she is on, then she says, “down and down I go,

where I’ll stop, God only knows” (139). This shows that she is very much

confused about her identity and coming future.

Not only Jasmine, the main character of the novel, but the other

Indian characters of the novel try to have their own space, they are very much

fed up with Americanness. Professor Vadhera, his wife and his old parents are

the best examples how they try and make every effort to stick to their own

Indian culture and Indianness. The apartment in which professor Vadhera live,

there were many other Indian families, these families usually visit each other in

mornings and in evenings. Nirmala worked all day in a sari store and all Indian

women buy saris from this store, an adjacent shop under the same Gujarati

ownership sold sweets and spices and rented Hindi movies on cassettes.

Professor Vadhera and his wife Nirmala did not go out at night to

watch English movies, and also they do not go for shopping in American

stores. But they have everything there in their own apartment. They had

created a world of their own. Vadhera said, “Why waste the money when we

have everything here?” And truly they did. They had Indian-food stores in the

block, Punjabi News Papers and Hindi magazines at the corner newsstand,

and a movie every night without having to dress up for it.

There are two most important issues in this novel, one is that,

whether Jasmine is really nostalgic about her Indian home or does she want to

forget everything Indian and adopt American way of life? This thing is very

xlviii

difficult to judge. But one thing is clear that if she had lived in India her

condition could have been worse than anything there as a widow, Indian

traditions and religious bound life may have made her life like hell. But for this

reason she should be thankful to America, she lead a happy life there. She

once said, “America clothes disguised my widowhood, in this apartment of

artificially maintained Indianness, I wanted to distance myself from everything

Indian, everything Jyoti like” (145). Jasmine is an Indian immigrant who has an

attachment to the land she is presently living in and a desire for her lost

homeland. She assimilates herself in American culture, but she still maintains

her Indian ethnic identity.

Professor Vadhera’s old parents are also very much melancholic

about their Indian home, every moment, every hour and every day they are

missing their India, they are so much alienated, that it is very hard for them to

spend even a single day. They don’t like to watch American channels but only

Indian movies, “there is so much English out there, why do we have to have it

here?” (144).The old couple visit every morning other Indian families in the

apartment or they serve tea and fried snacks to elderly visitors. In a way they

have a control over their domestic space, but they don’t have any authority

over the outer world. Living with Professor Vadhera Jasmine learnt about how

to survive as an Indian in New York, but other people like Tylor, Bud and Lillian

Gordon taught her how to survive by becoming an American. Jasmine said, “If

I had been another Nirmala, as they had expected-then Professorji’s lessons

would be life affirming, invaluable, inexpressibly touching. They had kept a

certain kind of Punjab alive, even if that Punjab no longer existed. They let

nothing go, lest everything be lost” (162).

As we know diaspora is a one way trip, there is no way back, once

a diaspora always a diaspora. There is no option of coming back to ones

homeland if one wishes to do so. Jasmine compared her condition with that of

an animal –giant lizard- with nowhere to go in the new land, an Indian woman

torn between two cultures. Jasmine to Sam, “Sam I thought, we’re both a long

way from home, aren’t we? What will we do? … there is no going back, is

there?”(164). Jasmine solely wishes to have a home. The question is where

lies home, and what is home? Is it the physical space one inhabits or the

xlix

symbolic conceptualisation of where one belongs? We can understand her

desire the way she talk to Du about Bud, “He is a good father. He gives us a

good home. How dare we want more” (209)? This home is not one which is

permanent but a very temporary one. Home is more than anything anyone

wants in life. Home is ‘a mystic place of desire’ in the immigrant’s imagination.

It means home is both a fantasy, a utopian existence and a mystic place of

desire, means a place of where there is no return, if returning is possible it is

only mystic. (Brah 192)

As Vijay Mishra has rightly said in his article, “(B)ordering Naipaul:

Indenture History and Diasporic Poetics” that ‘All diasporas are unhappy but

every diaspora is unhappy in its own way,’ same is the case with the

characters of this novel, everyone is unhappy in his/her own way. The ending

of the novel is very touching and heartrending Jasmine is very melancholic and

confused about her identity. She doesn’t have any idea what to do and where

to go, and the novel ends with Jane’s optimistic attitude towards her future life.

She exhorts, “How many more spaces are in me, how many more selves, how

many more husbands?” (215), Jasmine is arising from nowhere and

disappearing into a cloud.

Born Confused

Tanuja Desai Hidier is second generation American-born Indian

immigrant and presently lives in UK. She lived in New York and then moved to

U.K, she grew up in Wilbraham, Massachusetts and graduated from Brown

University. In New York City, she worked as a writer/editor for magazines.

Tanuja wrote her first novel Born Confused for which she was awarded ALA

Best Book for Young Adults in 2002. The main theme of her writing is the

portrayal of first and second generation Indian characters, and of finding a

place in America. She wrote The Border, a short story for which she was

awarded first prize in fiction category in the London Writers/Water-stones

Competition in 2001. Tiger, Tiger (2001) her another short story was included

in the Big City Lit anthology (New York City) celebrating the last decade of

Asian-American writing. Tanuja also wrote and directed many short films

like The Test and The Assimilation Alphabet dealing with same cultural

l

assimilation themes as her fictional works. Tanuja presently lives in London,

where she is the lead vocalist/lyricist in a melodic rock band.

Born Confused on the surface level is simply a story about an

American born seventeen year old girl Dimple Lala, but at the deeper level

there is something more than that. It deals with the issue of identity, space

making, preservation of one’s culture, axis of assimilation in host culture etc.

Dimple is the daughter of Indian immigrants. She is the narrator and the

protagonist of the novel and the whole plot revolves around Dimple and her

best friend Gwyn. The novel begins at the time when Dimple is going to be

about of seventeen years. Then she narrates the story of her past and about

how she met with her best friend Gwyn. Dimple spends all her time with Gwyn

and Gwyn is the major cause of influence for Dimple. This is a coming of age

novel. During the concluding years of high school, Dimple’s parents start

searching a suitable boy for her. Dimple's mother meets her old friend and

chooses her son, Karsh for her. Karsh looks like a well groomed Indian

gentleman, which of course is the cause for Dimple to change her identity.

Before meeting Karsh Dimple was not interested in an Indian boy to marry, but

as soon as she spends some time with Karsh she began to take interest in

him, she began to like him. The first turning-point occurs when Dimple finds out

that Karsh is the DJ at a dance club on the NYU campus. Suddenly Karsh, the

DJ, seems much more appealing than Karsh, the suitable Indian boy.

Unfortunately, Dimple's best friend, Gwyn, also finds Karsh to be appealing. A

controversy occurs when Gwyn and Karsh form a friendship and exclude

Dimple. When Dimple confronts Gwyn and accuses her of stealing her

boyfriend, they both had controversy over the issue and thus break off their

friendship. But it is very difficult for Dimple to live without her best friend and

she slowly resolves her differences. Gwyn then tells her that her relationship

with Karsh has ended because they broke up. After this Dimple bonds with

Karsh and her understanding of her own predicaments seems to be increasing

day by day in the end of the novel.

Tanuja Desai like other diasporic writers has a firsthand

experience of immigrant people’s problems. She is both an insider as well as

outsider observer of Indian and American cultures, because of her ancestral

li

background in India and her life is spent in America. Born Confused is a

fantastic novel which traces the journey of a teenage girl Dimple Lala and her

family from India to an alien country i.e., America. The two cultures, American

and Indian, provide the main settings for the book through comparing and

contrasting Dimple and her American friend Gwyn. Dimple Lala is the

protagonist of the novel and is interested in photography which reveals her role

as a keen observer rather than a participant: "Not quite Indian, and not quite

American," Dimple unsuccessfully tries to blend in, riding on the coattails of her

blue-eyed, blonde best friend, Gwyn.

During Dimple’s 17th birthday, she got a new vision and perception

about her own self. It was during this time in her life that she learned about

family strengths and family secrets and it was the summer she began to see

herself, her family, her world through different eyes. Till that time she did not

know who she was. In America, she was too Indian; in India she was too

American. She does not fit in any world completely and felt like she was born

confused and things had gone from bad to worse. Taking pictures through her

Chikka Tikka is the metaphor of looking at the world through different

perception.

Dimple’s parents wanted her to meet Karsh son of her mother‘s

friend, her parents are more interested in Karsh than that of Dimple, her

parents wanted her to marry Karsh. Dimple did not like the decision of her

parents until she was so much attracted and in love with him that she was

jealous of her best friend Gwyn. Dimple and Karsh did not fell in love at first

sight but it is after so many meetings that Dimple began to take interest in him

and began to like him. But before Dimple could actually fall in love with Karsh,

Gwyn had already begun to like and love Karsh. She shared this secret with

her friend Dimple, which later was the cause of controversy between the two.

Most part of the novel deals with the affair of the trio, Dimple, Gwyn and Karsh

and also Dimple’s relation with her parents and Gwyn’s mindset about her own

parents. But on a deeper level, the novel deals with a blending of cultures. The

author in a better way gives a description of Indian food, dress and customs.

Dimple distances herself from her family culture and its tradition, and

lii

everything that is Indian but it is only after meeting Karsh that her perception

about things changed, her hatred for the things turned into love.

All diasporic literature generally portrays the issues related to

location, movement, crossing border, original home, adopted home,

dislocation, relocation and identity formation. Since Born Confused also belong

to the category of diasporic fiction, so all these issues are be found in it. The

publication of Tanuja Desai Hidier's Born Confused marks a new and much-

awaited turn in the tradition of Indian diasporic fiction as well as Indian

American literature. This novel is a kind of new entrant in diasporic literature;

this tradition has already established itself through the critically acclaimed

works of writers such as Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,

Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. So far their works are concerned they focused largely on

the experiences of first generation Indian immigrants as they negotiate new

definitions of home and identity, but Born Confused talks about second-

generation Indian immigrants, and this experience has been explored in small

portion of Indian English literature. Hidier in her novel shows how her

characters mainly the protagonist of the novel Dimple Lala is struggling her

whole life to create her own space in America, both domestic as well as

diasporic space. The characters in this novel left no stone unturned to maintain

and preserve their domestic and diasporic identity, they are very much

concerned about their Indian culture, which they have taken with them when

they left for America, like their cooking habits, their dress, their religious

ceremonies their language etc. The novelist very artistically shows how Dimple

and her family try to establish and create their own space in an alien world i.e.

America. Dimple and her parents live as immigrants in America, and it gives

rise to many other issues which need to be discussed in the later part of this

work, and those issues include conflict between host culture and diasporic

people’s culture, alienation in host society, and difficulties of diaspora’s in

preserving their culture etc.

From the beginning of the novel certain characters are more

conscious of preserving the ancestral culture, like there is one Trilok Singh he

is so much attracted to his own culture that he wore his turban and the silver

Kada bangle all the time in college, Dimple said, “I’m one of only two Indians in

liii

the whole school. The other being the above mentioned Jimmy (Trilok) Singh,

who wore his ethnicity so brazenly, in the form of that pupil-shrinking turban

and Kada bangle on his wrist, I got the feeling that many people had stopped

noticing that I hailed originally from the same general hood,” (3-4) it shows the

difference between Jimmy and Dimple, how Jimmy is more like an Indian in

America and Dimple totally opposite to that, and she tries every-time to

become like an American. But the fact is that no doubt how much Dimple tries

to be American but she can’t shed her roots she will be recognized among

crowd. Her mother every time makes her aware that she is an India, “- Dimple,

no matter how much you try you cannot change your bones. Your body is your

temple; your body is your home. It tells you where you are from”, but in reply,

Dimple says “Mom, I am American” (25).

In this novel Dimple’s home is a hybrid of two languages and two

cultures that is one home with multiple identities. On one side we see how

Dimple’s parents are adherent to their own culture and on other hand we can

see Dimple Lala, a kind of character living in between two cultures and two

spaces, she is neither fully Indian nor fully American. Inside her house she is

an American and to outside world she is an Indian an ‘Other’. Dimple says

about her parents, “they’d always pose and preen and say Jalfreezi for

instamatic, counting out the ek, do, teen alongside my one, two, three. Our

home was different than lots of homes in this sense” (26). This is what we call

hybrid culture, a blending of two cultures.

Born in an alien land is very difficult task and to give birth is also

the same, but it is harder to live in a foreign land particularly when one is a

woman. Women are twice dislocated from their roots as compared to men, and

suffer more than men. Same is the situation of Dimple; her mother told her that

to give birth was not as painful as it is to bring her in America. Shilpa said to

Dimple: “That was the easy part, she said. - It is now that I am needing the

epidural” (76). Dimple’s parents don’t like her to follow American tradition;

they even don’t want their daughter to have American friends. They want

everything Indian for her: “Thank Ram Kavita is coming, the back of my

mother’s head commented. - Enough with these hanky-panky friendships of

yours,” (76) told Shilpa to her daughter. They even want Dimple to marry an

liv

Indian boy, and they themselves chose one by the name of Karsh Kapoor.

Shilpa knew that her daughter is the one who suffers more than anyone else.

Dimple is the kind of tragic character in the novel, Shilpa (Dimple’s mother)

knew it well that Dimple is helpless and can’t do anything to save herself from

America. Her mother told Dimple: “- But I know it is not just your fault, she

continued. - It is this America-you cannot escape it, like those golden arches

everywhere you turn. It is hard to resist it. But if I’d known the price we’d have

to pay for this land of opportunity was our own daughter, I might never have

left,” (83) this quote states that Shilpa is repenting on her decision to come to

America, before coming to this dreamland she was not aware of the fact that

she will lose everything whatever she has, like her daughter, her culture, her

home and her space.

The novel can be broadly divided in to two parts based on the life

and experiences of its protagonist Dimple, because Dimple’s life itself is

divided in to two parts, one is when she try and imitate to be American and the

second is when she is enlightened and realizes that she can never be like

American. Dimple once said: “So I was an ABCD. Why hadn’t anyone told

me?” (108). When Dimple met with Karsh she got totally transformed, her

perception about America, about India and about her own self changed. Her

hatred for India turned into love for India. Her desire to look like American turns

into a desire to look like an Indian. Here we can also find how the title of the

novel is most apt, because Dimple till this time was confused about her identity

and about her real home. Dimple said, “Kavita had surprised me, made me

think about my parents, my home, everything all over again-even myself”

(109). She further said that she got so much wrong these days, it seemed, “I

wondered if I’d ever be an ABD, like her secret boyfriend” (109).

Parents teach their children how to be an Indian by following

Indian culture and traditions. Their effort and their dedication towards their

children show how much they are concerned more about their children rather

than for themselves. Dimple: “my mother has told me Namaste means my

respect to you” (123). Shilpa always compel Dimple to wear Indian Salvar

Khameez or Indian Dress, and on her birthday and other occasions she told

Dimple to have Bindi on her forehead which is a sign of her Indianness.

lv

Dimple’s mother once said to Karsh: “you know the guest is god in Indian

household” (126).

When Karsh and his mother visited Dimple’s home, there they

talked all about India and nothing but Indian things; they were less concerned

about America and more about India. They talk about tabla and the tutor of

Karsh, Zakir Mehra; they talk about Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.

Dimple said: “They also had a monopoly on my father’s record collection and

video bootlegs from Jackson Heights” (135).

It is very nice and interesting when one sees the Indian Sari

shops, restaurants and other stores almost one complete Indian market in New

Jersey: “sari stores shimmered with silk the sheen of fish skin, bird wing, petal

wet, crying iris, broken yak, brushed tooth, oil slick” (158).

When Dimple enters the club, she is very much confident that she

is entering into her own territory and not into an alien world. The music club

looks as if it belongs to an Indian wedding and is less like a nightclub. She now

becames aware of the fact that there is something different between her and

Gwyn, and that is their cultural identity, their roots. Dimple said:

But the minority was majority here which in fact meant that, here,

Gwyn was in the minority … it was strange revelation, to be brown among

the brown. It had happened in social situations with relatives and family

friends, but on those occasions it still seemed we were a tiny ghee-

burning coconut- breaking minority tucked away in someone’s kitchen

while the whole white world went on outside. And in those instances I

have never felt like my world was necessarily the one inside. (195)

After going to the night club Dimple’s perception about India and about

her own identity changed. Before this she used to associate herself with

America but now she has a strong belongingness with Indian culture, now she

realises that her home is not America but in India. Now she began to think

about her parents and how much they have suffered after leaving India and

coming to America. She said: “Where was the home East or West or my body

in between? ...my parents knew why they have come here so many years ago-

lvi

but why were they still here? Even they seemed to be wondering lately, I got

the feeling; the thought of them grounded me further,” (262) the question

asked by Dimple is the question which any diaspora would like to ask i.e. why

her parents are still here. But the answer to this question is very difficult, as

nobody is clear about why they live there.

As Avtar Brah mentions in her book Cartographies of Diaspora:

Contesting Identities: “Diaspora space as a conceptual category is ‘inhabited,’

not only by those who have migrated and their descendants, but equally by

those who are constructed and represented as indigenous” (205). So from

Brah’s perspective if we look at the characters of the novel, then it can be said

that Gwyn, who is an American, is as much diaspora as Dimple. The statement

by Brah can be seen as question on the position of nativity. Gwyn holds the

same place as is held by Dimple, she is also unsettled in her own country, she

also works hard to make her own space in which she could be herself, and

feels sense of completeness and comfortability. In the same way in which

Dimple tries to make herself American, Gwyn tries to mix with Indian culture

but could not do so.

When Gwyn met with Karsh she tries her best to adopt Indian culture.

She want to be like Dimple, she is so much interested in learning Indian culture

that she take Dimple’s clothes, her Bindi and various other Indian items.

Dimple was so much influenced by Gwyn and American culture that she

considers herself American and almost hates whatever is Indian. But this

influence is not one sided in fact it is two sided. Gwyn in return has Dimple’s

influence on her identity. Dimple’s mother became so much excited after she

comes to know that Gwyn want to borrow some Indian clothes and records,

mother replied: “wonderful! I am just delighted by all this interest she’s taking in

Indian customs,” (284) but Dimple doesn’t want to share her own culture with

Gwyn, she want to have it for herself, her mother told her, “Dimple, don’t be too

selfish about sharing your culture. At least we have a culture to share” (284).

Dimple’s father becomes so happy when he comes to know that his daughter

is taking interest in learning Indian culture because earlier Dimple was allergic

to Indian culture. Her father cried: “- Prabhu, I feel like breaking a coconut”

(284).

lvii

When there was a conference in America on Indian theme. Dimple,

Gwyn, Kavita and Sabina were also present there. There were many topics

discussed in this scholarly conference, it was about Indian history, race,

ethnicity, gender, and a mix of socio-cultural questions. Dimple and Gwyn

make preparations for the conference many weeks earlier, because the

conference was actually related to India, so Dimple searched in her house

every kind of books related to India: “On the day of the conference I was ready.

I knew that India had twenty-five states (and seven union territories), almost

two dozen major languages, and Hinduism was the religion practiced by about

four-fifths of the peeps … And a bindi” (290).

The above quote shows how much preparations Dimple made for the

day, she is fully prepared, dressed in Paisley shirt and jeans and a bindi on her

forehead. This is what we can say creating her outer world, a space of her

own. Although the conference was held in America but it was in an Indian way.

Besides Dimple, other characters in the novel feel the same kind of

isolation and alienation in a foreign land; they are very confused about their

own identity. They live in dilemma whether they are Indians or Americans or in

between the two. Now for-example we will take the case of Karsh, who stands

totally different from other characters in the novel. His identity is multi-layered;

he has spent some part of his life in India, some in U.K and some in America.

Where does he stand? As Dimple rightly said about him: “I watched Karsh as

he waited his turn to speak, and wondered now where he fit into it all himself-

raised partly in India, partly in the States, and done a little U.K time … And he

left me pretty C, that was certain” (297).

Then if we talk about Kavita, her condition is also the same, she is more

Indian than Dimple, Dimple’s parents prefers Kavita more as her friend than

Gwyn. They feel happy whenever Kavita visited their home. Dimple has a kind

of sense of belongingness with her. As we found so much of Indian stuff in

Dimple’s home in the same way Kavita’s home also has a lot of Indian stuff.

Dimple said: “And there were at least as many Indian volumes as we had in

our house, some in the original Sanskrit” (304). This is how Kavita tries to

maintain her Indian space in America.

lviii

One chapter of the novel is named as Sub-continental Breakfast, from

the title itself it can be understood what it mean, there is one restaurant by the

name of East is Feast, which is Indian, where every kind of Indian food is

available and also workers are Indian. When they are on their way to the

restaurant Dimple’s mother played a very strange kind of sport i.e. spot the

Indian. They were finding Indians in New Jersey streets. What kind of madness

is it? We can understand how melancholic they are and how disturbed they are

in America. Dimple said: “my mother played her favorite outdoor sport, spot the

Indian … -Look! An Indian! She said, gesturing excitedly across the street to

where a spindly turbaned fellow hunched, paranoiacally withdrawing money

from an ATM” (321). The presence of Indian restaurant in America is in itself a

big thing and for Indians in America it is a thing of joy and happiness. They felt

as if they have created their own space in America. This gives them a kind of

solace.

Kavita told Dimple once that she is inter-disciplinary, interdisciplinary in

the sense that she is both Indian and American at the same time, Kavita to

Dimple: “but Dimple. May be that is because you are too big for one place; you

have too much heart and home and information to be contained in one tidy

little box. You are … interdisciplinary, if you will. But you have to realize” (382).

Talking about diasporic literature and people in diaspora, there are many

issues related with it. We can’t let them go without talking about those issues.

Born confused and other two novels i.e., The Namesake and Jasmine deal

with issues of diaspora identity, cultural conflict between the host society and

immigrants, generational gaps like between Dimple and her family, Dimple

tries to become American while her parents following their ancestral culture.

They try to preserve whatever they have brought from India. They want that

their daughter shouldn’t make American friends but Indian. It is a kind of

generational gap or ideological differences between Dimple and her parents.

Dimple’s parents are first generation diaspora so they are more nostalgic about

their homeland while on the other hand Dimple is second generation diaspora

she doesn’t have so much intimation with Indian culture as she has with

American culture. Her parents want her to marry an Indian boy named Karsh

but she is not interested in Indian things.

lix

Inside their house or what can be called as domestic space they have full

control over things like their language, dress, religious activities and we can

see how their house is full of Indian books like Indian history, Ramayana and

Mahabharata, etc.

In music club on the occasion of Karsh’s birthday party Dimple was

shocked when she find some non-Indian in saris, they resembled same as

Indian women. Dimple: “At a first glance, it felt the room was all Indian, and I

wondered at this, as the point had been to mix it up to draw in a wider

audience for Karsh. And then I realized it was a handful of non-Indians in saris”

(476). This shows the impact of immigrants on the culture of host country. And

in same club Dimple once again said: “And this much was clear now: it was no

passive homogenous creature, identity, but rather diversity, a thrashing,

grinding, and all-out dirty dancing together” (491).

The Music club episode is one of the best throughout the novel where

one can find how Indians struggle and try to create their diasporic spaces. All

Indians gather there and throw a party which is typical Indian party, Indian

songs, Indian Bhangra etc. Dimple and Gwyn were also there. Dimple could

see a complete Indian atmosphere in the club, in fact when she was on her

way to club she, “dreamt of a quick entry into the open arms of the motherland

vanished”. She talks about the club:

that this line was ninety-nine percent Indian. The faces were all in a

golden row against brick like a cheerful decked-out subcontinent

criminal lineup-though the crime would be what? Eating with the left

hand, smelling the flowers before offering them to gods, touching

someone else’s food while on the rag? But upon a closer sidelong

glance I realized this was a breed of Indian I had never seen before in

my life. (187)

It means Dimple is entering a new world which she has never

witnessed in her life. On seeing so many people in the club Dimple is shocked,

she does not understand where from all these Indian people have come from,

so she said: “Where had they been hiding all this time? These Indians who

looked somewhat present in the twenty first century? Why hadn’t I seen them

lx

at Garbha and Diwali parties and the occasional wedding? Or had I and they

been as disguised in those contexts as I’d been?” (188)

The celebration of Indian Independence Day in America is very

amazing; it is a sign towards the creation of own space in America by Indians.

They prepared with great fervor enthusiastically for the celebration of

Independence Day of India. Dimple said about the Independence Day like this:

“Hot Pot events veered closer- the impeding Independence Day meltdown and

the final fiesta- my spirits sank” (404).

Not only in their houses but outside also the Indians perform their

religious duties as if they are in their own country. The description of Shree

Ganesha Temple in the novel shows us how the temple is well decorated and

how there is huge crowd of Indian devotees inside the temple. When Dimple

and her father entered the temple they were shocked when they find a lot of

Indian people there: “The Shree Ganesha Temple’s almost librarial exterior

completely belied the raucous ruckus-on every level, assaulting every sense-

going on full speed inside the square structure” (405).

Dimple and her family struggle to survive in America, they try their

best to create their own space, both their domestic and the diasporic space, so

it doesn’t mean that they fully assimilate with the American culture but to some

extent they did it, but they are equally nostalgic about their Indian home,

Dimple’s father once said: “if someone had told me before we left India that I

might lose my daughter even more quickly in the process, I would not have

budged one inch” (411).

At the time when Kavita shifted to other apartment, there one thing

is worth noting about the way she performed all the rituals before entering the

new house as is the tradition in India. Kavita and Dimple performed the Puja

and other rituals. This is the way how to make strange things own, the

apartment as well as America is new to them, but they know the way how to

occupy the space of alien land. Dimple said: “in India, whenever you come

upon a new beginning you invoke the god Ganesha, remover of obstacles, and

have a Puja, which was, in this case, a sort of Hindu housewarming. So the

plan was this: Kavita and I would Poojaficate the ‘new’ home …” (426), and

lxi

then they did all the formalities like washing hands, feet, and taking some

flowers to offer to god Ganesha. Dimple said to Kavita: “Shouldn’t we at least

throw rice in the fire or something? That always seemed to happen at Indian

weddings,” (427) these kinds of activities remind them of India. They almost

always do things keeping in mind the Indianness.

Although the diasporas have to struggle enough to create the

outside space but the fact is that they also have to struggle for the preservation

of domestic space but not as much as to preserve their diasporic space. When

we enter the house of Dimple there we can see how they have maintained its

Indianness. Dimple enters in to Krishna temple with her mother which is in the

kitchen:

where a low flame was burning off one of those waxy rounds that float

through punch bowls at holiday parties. The temple with its Sai Baba

pendant and lottery ticket and jar of hand-sewn silk roses, a gift from

Hush-Hush Aunty. The incense holder, and of course, the magnificent

ivory -encrusted Krishna. And in the corner the tiny silver pot of tikka

that my mother’s own mother had pressed between her brows the day

she left for America, so many years ago. (475)

As the novel shows, one can hardly overcome cultural differences and

racial prejudices. Though Dimple and Gwyn are friends for a long time, they

can never think alike or appreciate one another's decision. Even at one time

they both don’t make well with each other, and expresses doubt about each

other’s good intention. It is not Dimple and Gwyn who are in conflict with each

other but it is actually the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ that are in conflict.

lxii

WORKS CITED

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London:

Routledge, 1996. Print.

Hidier, Tanuja Desai. Born Confused. New York: Push, 2003. Print.

Jain, Prakash Chand. Racial Discrimination against Overseas Indians: A Class

Analysis. New Delhi. Concept Publishing Company, 1990. Print.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

Print.

Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. New York: Grove Press, 1989. Print.

Prasad, Amar Nath. Indian Novelists in English: Critical Perspectives. New

Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2000. Print.

lxiii

CHAPTER 4

Comparative Analysis and Conclusion

In this study the comparison of selected works has been done on

various levels, to find out both similarities as well as dis-similarities. One

important similarity of these novels is that all belong to the genre of diasporic

literature. And all three novels are written by female writers who are immigrants

in America. They have tried to portray the traumas of dislocation, rootless-ness,

homelessness etc. experienced by various characters.

In comparison to Born Confused and The Namesake, Bharati Mukherjee’s

Jasmine is entirely a different kind of novel, because for its protagonist,

Jasmine, home is something which is associated with freedom and individuality.

She left Indian feudal and tradition bound society to live in modern society i.e.

America, where she could enjoy her individuality. She is alone in her journey

both physically and metaphorically. There is no family and relatives to her in

America, and the world of America is alien to her.

Gogol, the protagonist of The Namesake is in search of his own home.

He does not feel comfortable in his parents’ home. His parents try to create an

Indian atmosphere in home, but he is more interested in creating his own space

outside his parents’ home, so “he didn’t want to go home on the weekends, to

go with them to Pujos and Bengali Parties, to remain unquestionably in their

world”(126). He spends most of his time with American friends, especially after

his affair with Maxine. He spends many months in her home with her parents.

After he got the job as an architecture designer, he starts living in his own rented

apartment and visits his parents after many months.

He didn’t want to attend his father’s alma mater, and lived in an

apartment in Central Square as his parents once had, and revisits the streets

about which his parents speak nostalgically,

Gogol is a second generation immigrant, and so he has some kind of

generational and cultural gap with his parents. He was born in America and so is

deeply influenced by it, but at his home, his parents create Indian atmosphere,

and consequently he gets divided between the two. Gogol’s relationship with his

family is totally different as compared to that of Jasmine, he himself prefers to

lxiv

be American but his parents taught him how to become Indian. Unlike his

parents, Gogol does not see himself as a stranger living in a foreign land.

Ashima and Ashoke struggle hard to keep alive their Indianness, their ancestral

culture despite being surrounded by the American culture all around. They go at

the Kathakali dance performance or a Sitar recital at memorial hall. When Gogol

is in third grade, they send him to, “Bengali language and culture lessons every

other Saturday, held in the home of one of their friends,”(65) but no one of their

children is a bit interested in adopting Indian culture. Gogol and Sonia are in

America not because of their own choice but because their parents had moved

to America for bright future and Gogol and Sonia were born there, this was the

fate of both of them, “But now it is his room at Yale where Gogol feels more

comfortable. He likes its oldness, its persistent grace”(108).

And at the end of novel when there was the thanksgiving, Gogol’s mother

and Sonia’s would be husband, Ben, had come, along with Moushumi’s parents,

and they all had celebrated the holiday together in New York, crowded together

in Gogol’s apartment, “It was the first time he had not gone either to his parents’

or to his in-laws’ for a holiday” (270) So, as Gogol matures with age, he creates

his own distinct space.

Dimple, the protagonist of Born Confused has the same situation as

Gogol. She also wants to abandon what is Indian in her, she wants to be

different from her parents and she prefers to live with her blond American

childhood friend Gwyn as compared to any Indian friends like Kavita or Sabina.

She is also born in America, and knows nothing about her homeland i.e. India,

thus she is an ABCD i.e. American Born Confused Desi. Dimple once sighs,

“But for now I was an ABCD, I didn’t really know what that meant. But that was

the point” (109). Dimple does not like her parents' Indian type of home, and she

even feels no importance of it in her own life. She wants that her house should

be like that of Gwyn, in which there are no restrictions but a life of one’s own

choice. Gwyn is her role model, whatever Gwyn did Dimple followed her. Most

of the times, Dimple is confined to her darkroom, where she develops her

pictures; this room stands both for her physical as well as psychological space.

Dimple said that the dark room is her favorite place from rest of the house, “my

favorite place in the whole house, perhaps the world; my darkroom” (11).

lxv

On the other side, life of Jasmine is vastly different from that of Gogol and

Dimple. Jasmine a widow has no parents and no relatives in America; she is

enough stranger than Gogol and Dimple in America. But she adjusted herself in

such a way that some strangers became her caretakers who showed her the

way how to survive in America. Her relationship with Lillian Gordon, Professor

Vadhera and his family, Bud Ripplemeyer and his mother and the relationship

with other people in her life in America is quiet interesting and note-worthy, she

assimilates herself with American culture and with the people she met in life. As

proverb goes, ‘Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss’ but Jasmine’s condition is

opposite to that, she is also like a rolling stone, rolling from India to America,

and then in America still she didn’t stay at one place or in one house. As

Jasmine keeps on rolling she keeps on gathering the moss and changing her

identities. She met many people in her life and from every one she adapted

something. It all started when she got married to Prakash, and it is he who

changes her name from Jyoti to Jasmine, then she met Lillian who named her

as Jazzy, and it is Lillian who taught Jasmine how to become American, she

said to her that she should shed her all Indianness and should walk and talk like

Americans. Lillian to Jazzy, “Now remember if you walk and talk American, they

will think you were born here”(133). She gave Jasmine the clothes of her

daughter, so that she will look like American girls. Jasmine is in America

because of her own choice, she changes from Indian to American. Taylor called

her Jase and finally Bud named her from Jase to Jane. For Jasmine there is no

particular home but she considers America as her home. She spends first

seventeen years of her life in Hasnapur (India), and rest of her life in America.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is a narrative about the ‘Border

Maintenance’ and ‘Border Erosion’ of an Indian Bengali family in America,

according to John A. Armstrong, former is the preservation of one’s culture and

customs through resistance of host land’s culture and the latter is the axis of

assimilation, mixing with the host culture and let loose and erode one’s

boundaries. Further the novel is about the Ganguli family into America, over

thirty years (from 1968 to 2000), the cultural dilemmas experienced by them and

their America born children in different ways, the spatial, cultural and emotional

dislocations suffered by them in their efforts to settle ‘home’ in a new land. While

on the other hand Jasmine is a novel about an Indian widow who enjoys

lxvi

freedom more than anything else in her life in new land. She preserves less and

assimilates more in American society. The novel portrays the life long journey of

its heroine from Hasnapur to America.

Writers try to show how their characters struggle to establish their

diasporic space in America. In The Namesake, we can see how much excited

Ashoke was when he was given an office in university with his nametag outside

it. He felt as if he had achieved something in his life. It is big achievement for an

immigrant to have an office with a nametag of his/her own. Same kind of

situation we can find in the novel Born Confused, when Dimple entered the

music club she found inside the club that all people are Indian, and very few

American, she felt as if she had entered her own world. She said that it is

looking like an Indian wedding more than a music club, because the way the

people have dressed and the type of dance they were doing. It was a pure

Punjabi Bhangra and not that Jazz, Pop or Rock music and not that American

kind of dance. Dimple had a kind of satisfaction that she is entering the world of

her own people. It was at this time when she met Karsh that her perception

about her own identity and about her homeland changed. She is totally

transformed, because of the influence of Karsh Kapoor. She began to consider

herself as Indian, and said about the music club that ‘majority here is minority’.

She began to feel that Gwyn belongs to culture that is not the same but totally

different from that of her own.

The domestic space i.e. the culture and customs related to the interior of

the house maintained by characters in all three novels can be seen from the

beginning. The authors have described the Indian food, dress, religious

customs, and other things time and again in these novels. In Jasmine one can

find on the first page how Lahiri has given the description of Ashima’s kitchen

and the food she is preparing. Lahiri writes: “Ashima Ganguli stands in the

kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters

peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt … wishing there were

mustard oil to pour into the mix” (1).

In Jasmine we can see how professor Vadhera’s home stands for the

same as Ashima’s and Ashoke’s stands for, in The Namesake. Nirmala, wife of

Professor Vadhera is still a typical Indian women living in America preparing

Indian food in her kitchen in an Indian style.

lxvii

In Born Confused we see how Dimple’s mother Shilpa is working in the

kitchen, she has stored a lot of Indian stuff in her kitchen. Dimple says to her

cousin Kavita, “All day the house had smelled of spices and now before our

eyes lay the resulting combustion of all that kitchen chemistry”(92).The author

has given a long description of the kitchen and Indian food prepared inside the

kitchen, Brown sugar roti and cloud-puff puris (Channa Batura), just itching to be

popped. Coconut rice fluffed up over the silver pot like a sweet-smelling pillow:

Samosas transparent, peas bundling just below the surface,

Spinach with nymph-finger cloves of garlic that sank like butter on the

tongue. A vat of cucumber raita, the two-percent yogurt thickened with

sour cream (which my mom added when we had guests, though she

denied it when asked; I’d seen the empty carton, not a kitten lick left).

And the centrepiece: a deep serving dish of lamb curry, the pieces

melting tenderly off the bone. (93)

Further, religious ceremonies play an important role in space delimitation.

Texts under study show how religious rituals are performed in the house of

Professor Vadhera in Jasmine, Gangulis’ house in The Namesake and Dimple’s

house in Born Confused. Vadhera’s old parents are very much attached to their

Indian tradition; they perform Puja every morning in their house.

In Born Confused in Dimple’s house her parents worshiped gods and

goddesses every day and every morning and specially at functions. Dimple said,

“My father was beside her, praying to Saraswati. That was my goddess, the one

he focused on to make his prayer for”(73). In this text, Indian gods have been

mentioned at various places by the author. There is the mention of Krishna,

Saraswati, Ganesha etc. Dimple said about her house, “but out of nowhere the

gods seemed to have sprung up all over our house, “in the kitchen alone, the

ivory Krishen in the temple, a bright orange trunk smiling Titwala Ganesha

sweetly removing obstacles from the stove top, and the jamming sandalwood

cereal-shelf Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and music…”(73).

Each character in the novel try to conquer the social space, and try to

make it his/her own. In the novel The Namesake, Gangulis buy an apartment on

Pemberton Road and they managed it in such a way that although it was on

American ground, but from inside it was all Indian. This is how they try to

penetrate their roots in American soil. They try to make their new house at

lxviii

Pemberton Road as their new home, they feel a kind of satisfaction as Gogol

one day pasted the name in golden letters ‘GANGULI’ on mailbox in capital

letters, “Back home on Pemberton Road, he help his father paste individual

golden letters bought from a rack in the hardware store, spelling out GANGULI

on one side of their mailbox” (67).

Dimple’s parents, who are both doctors, buy an apartment in New Jersey.

They try to establish their home in New Jersey.

For immigrants living in foreign lands, deep sense of belongingness with

their fellow countrymen can be seen. When Dimple and her mother go outside

for shopping or for any other purpose, they prefer to buy things from Indian

people only. At one incident when Dimple went with her mother to Manhattan to

get visa to India for her mother, Dimple said, “so we went to lunch at a place that

wasn’t Indian … we left vastly unsatisfied and bought chestnuts from the Indian

guy on the corner” (64). Similarly, in The Namesake we can find many such

events. Gangulis prefer Indian things, whether it is Indian food, Indian sari shops

or anything else. Once on a tour to Rockefeller Centre and Central Park and the

Empire State Building, Sonia and Gogol were not allowed to go out of car at any

place, “but they were allowed out of the car only once, when they got to

Lexington Avenue, to eat lunch at an Indian restaurant and then to buy Indian

groceries, and polyester saris…” (127).

Immigrants, use memory of past place to construct imaginatively their

new lived world in alien country. Ancestral land for dispersed people often

serves as an anchor of attachment to be loyal to their own culture. In The

Namesake when Ashima was in hospital, there is one thing worth noting that

how she imaginatively compared her Indian culture or Indian home with that of

her American location and place. In Indian houses, every family members take

off their shoes outside the house and nobody take it inside. This shows the

piousness and sacredness of Indian houses in America. Then we see at one

time how Karsh slid off his shoes outside when entering Gwyn’s house, “and he

slid off his sneaks on the porch” and Gwyn giggled shyly at Karsh, as if they had

been his Calvins and asked Karsh, why are you doing that, and Karsh replied,

“A home is a sacred place-like a temple”(238). When Radha and her son Karsh

Kapoor went to Dimple’s house, then also we can see how Shilpa takes her

shoes out of the house. Dimple said:

lxix

“My mother made a great show of taking off her shoes before stepping

back into the living room … Karsh had already boingged out of his sneaks and

Radha kicked off her mules. My father placed all the footwear on the porch with

ours, and then we were all barefoot and stagnant in the living room” (125).

Then at last when almost the party was over Radha was about to lit a

cigarette, but Shilpa (Dimple’s mother) said to her, “Oh, I’m sorry, Radha, this is

a non-smoking house” (140).

It is very ironical that Gogol Ganguli is an architecture designer, he is

doing the job of designing and renovating the houses of other people but he

himself is without a home throughout his whole life.

Alienation from the host culture, in all the three novels almost all Indian

characters feel a kind of alienation, a kind of separateness from the American

culture. In The Namesake Gogol have moments of alienation in his school, it is

the ritual of the school that American flag is hoisted every morning, but what

about Gogol, what does he think about his own nationality? Then is the episode

of the graveyard, when all students were searching for their own name in tomb

stones Gogol was finding his own name, when he found none related to his own

name then he realized that he is something different from the rest of students.

Same is the situation with Dimple in Born Confused, although she maintained

herself in such way that she feel that she will be like Gwyn, but still she could

not be like her. At American parties she sometimes felt that she is lacking

something, e.g. when she is with Dimple’s friends Dylan and Julian. When she is

upset she went to the bridge and sit there alone, “I didn’t feel like going home

just yet, so I crossed through the strip of pine and fern and went out to the

bridge and sat down, dangling my legs off the edge. It felt funny being back

here; after my crazy afternoon, the world on the other side seemed miles away”

(147).

So we can say that she was feeling a kind of alienation with the host

culture. Jasmine’s alienation can also be seen at many times during her stay in

America. And sometimes she feels alienated not only from American culture but

also from her own family and from Indian culture. In Born Confused when Karsh

and his mother Radha came to Dimple’s house, there was an interesting but

also painful incident with Dimple, everyone after taking some wine began to talk

lxx

in Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati. Dimple feel so lonely that she began to feel isolated

in her own house with her own family members. Dimple sighed:

The emptier the glasses got, the further they went, the more

visibly relaxed my mother became-and the less I knew what the frock

they were talking about. This was also due to the fact that more and

more Hindi and Marathi and Gujarati words began to nest in the

conversation, like lost birds migrating home, until there was hardly any

English left. I felt strange listening to them, like they’d all shared another

time, another planet, and you really had to have been there to get it.

(139)

Sense of inferiority complex about the Indian culture and a kind of

superiority regarding American culture is prevalent among second generation

immigrants. They try to hide what is Indian in them; they feel a kind of insult

when anybody asks them about their birth, about their nationality and about their

culture. In The Namesake, we can see how Moushami and Gogol behave, how

they pretend to be American. Gogol also didn’t join the Indian Association in his

high school, and he has no ABCD friends. When Gogol was admitted in Yale

and he got a room in hostel, he feel so proud that he is living in such a room

which has earlier been used by some American boys also, “He likes that so

many students have occupied it before him”(108). One day when he attended a

panel discussion about Indian novels written in English, he is bored by the

panellists, who keep referring to something called “marginality,” he feel

ashamed of being present in the panel. In college also there are a lot of ABCDs,

but he has no idea of them there in the campus. Because he didn’t like them,

“He has no ABCD friends at college. He avoids them, for they remind him too

much of the way his parents choose to live” (119).

Dimple traverses the fate that Jasmine escapes. For second generation

immigrant Dimple, migration is not a matter of choice. As is the trend of new

diasporas. Dimple has no strong link with her ‘homeland’ i.e. India, but she

accepts the American nationality without any dispute. She is every time ready to

assimilate in American culture. Her parents taught her to make Indian friends

and to be Indian in dress and nature. Her mother wants her to have a bindi on

her forehead. Shilpa to Dimple, “I know what is missing, beta! Why don’t you put

a bindi on?” (122) but Dimple tries to become like her friend Gwyn, because the

lxxi

only reason is that her friend is American. Throughout the novel she felt a kind

of dependency upon Gwyn. She couldn’t decide anything for herself of her own,

she gives more preference to the choice of her friend Gwyn, at restaurants and

in shopping malls she would like that Gwyn should choose the things for her.

She hates so much of marrying an Indian boy from her very early age. When her

parents told her about Karsh she doesn’t like the idea at all. She wants to marry

an American boy. She wants to become like her American friends, but her

parents are opposed to this. Dimple’s father said to Dimple: “We didn’t think

you’d have to be like them” and Dimple, “I didn’t know how to tell them: of

course I had to be like them,” (82) Dimple also didn’t like the Indian food, she

once said, “I wasn’t a big fan of Indian food” (92).

Jasmine did the same she disliked the Indian tradition bound society,

according to Jasmine it is America and not India which disguises her

widowhood. She once said, “America clothes disguised my widowhood, in this

apartment of artificially maintained Indianness, I wanted to distance myself from

everything Indian, everything Jyoti like” (145).

Another important aspect of comparison in three novels is the condition of

the parents of protagonists, like Dimple’s mother's condition is almost the same

as that of the condition of Gogol’s mother, and Gogol’s father’s condition can be

compared with that of Dimple’s father.

Lahiri shows that the immigrants in their enthusiasm to stick to their own

cultural beliefs and customs gradually imbibe the cultural ways of the host

country too. Though initially Ashoke did not like the celebration of Christmas and

Thanksgiving but gradually the family began to celebrate the festivals,

celebrated by American, as Gogol recalls that, “it was for him, for Sonia (his

younger sister), that his parents had gone to the trouble of learning these

customs” (286). Ashima found preparing a number of Bengali dishes for above

forty Bengali guests “less stressful than the task of feeding a handful of

American children, half of whom always claim they are allergic to milk, all of

whom refuse to eat the crusts of their bread,” (72) Which shows less familiarity

of Ashima with American food and more love with Indian food.

Though forced to sit in Pujos and other religious ceremonies along with

the children of other Bengali families, Gogol and Sonia, relish American and

continental food more than the syrupy Bengali dishes and enjoy the celebration

lxxii

of the Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween more, as attractive gifts follow

therein. In the same way Dimple’s parents try their best to preserve their own

culture, but due to the social pressure or for the reason to survive in American

society they also imbibe some of the features of American Culture. On one hand

they preserve the sacredness of their house by performing Pujos, and on the

other hand they celebrate Christmas and other christens’ festivals. They took

branded wine, Dimple’s father said, “Would anyone like a drink?” Dimple’s

mother “nodded approvingly”. Dimple’s father “We have got water, ginger ale,

cranberry juice, or...- here my father took a deep breath. - Red wine” (137).

As members of the Indian diasporic community, the authors provide a

much-needed insider perspective in analyzing the contested self and identity of

Indian immigrant characters mainly women in the United States of America. One

important thing which can be seen in all three novels is how Indian immigrants

create acquaintances and friendship with other Indians whether they are

Bengali, Punjabi or from any other state of India. They live like one family, share

joys and sorrows with each other, celebrate religious festivals and birthdays

together. Like immigrants of other communities Ashima and Ashoke, in The

Namesake too make their circle of Bengali acquaintances, get known through

one another. They know Maya and Dilip Nandi, “meet Mitras through the Mitras,

the Banerjees” and then the young Bengali bachelors in the market who return

from Calcutta with ‘wives’. They become “friends” only “for the reason” that “they

all come from Calcutta” (38). Thus “a member’s adherence to a diasporic

community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their

past migration history”, (IX) says Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas. These

Bengali families gather on different occasions like the rice eating ceremony of

their children, naming ceremonies, birthdays, marriages, deaths and Bengali

festivals like Navratras and Pujos.

In Born Confused we can see how Dimple’s family has close bonding

with other Bengali families and have strong friendship with them, they went to

each other’s house and throw parties; they go out for lunch and dinner in Indian

restaurants. Kavita is also very close to Dimple’s family and have strong

intimation with Dimple. Kavita and Sabina also went to Dimple’s house.

In Jasmine we see how professor Devender Vadhera’s family has close

relations with other Indians families. His old parents visit every morning to other

lxxiii

Indian families in the apartment. And they also have Indian guests. “There were

thirty two Indian families in our building of fifty apartments…” (146) and old

parents of professor Vadhera visit these families, “Or we went to visit with other

Punjabi families in sparsely, furnished, crowded apartments in the same

building”(146).

Lahiri gives a long and vivid description of Indian stuff in the house of

Dimple, when Dimple asked her father for some Indian books to prepare for the

conference on Indian theme. There is a big library of Indian literature which

includes religious scriptures, politics, classical Sanskrit books etc. although the

library is not managed properly but the shelves are full of books, books are not

placed in a particular order on the bookshelves and blue trunks but also stacked

over the unfilled-in warranties in the cardboard boxes that has once housed

turntables and standing fans, microwaves and cassette decks, and even the

smith corona typewriter. There are various books in the house like:

Books on Indian mythology, Gandhi and Nehru biographies, a

personal history of partition; travel guides; books on elephants, on

Indian classical dance (which I realized now had to be my mother’s), the

British Raj, the overturn of the British Raj, the princely states; the poetry

of Rabindranath Tagore, the stories of Satyajit Ray; the Mahabharata

and Ramayana; guides to Indian architecture, alienation, and Ayurvedic

treatments. (287)

In Born Confused the conversation of Kavita, Sabina, Gwyn and Dimple

about how they name their relatives in India, how marriages are arranged in

India, is indirectly a microcosm of cultural contrast of America and India. Dimple

said to Gwyn “In India we call everybody aunty and uncle, all friends of the

family”. Are you the one having the arranged marriage? Gwyn asked to Kavita.

“No, said Sabina before Kavita’s lips had parted. - that would be her sister being

sold off like cattle to the supposed superhero” (178).

There seems to be some autobiographical touches in all the three novels.

Talking about her own dilemmas, Jhumpa Lahiri says in an interview with Jeffrey

Brown, “It's what my world is, and I've always been aware of my parents came

from Calcutta. I have found myself sort of caught between the worlds of left

behind and still clung to, and also the world that surrounded me at school and

everywhere else, as soon as I set foot out of the door.” (Lahiri)

lxxiv

Lahiri’s condition may be related to that of the protagonist (Gogol) of her

novel. About the controversy of name of Gogol, Lahiri says in an interview she

think that for the child of immigrant, the existence of two names kind of speaks

so strongly for the very predicament of many children of immigrants. On the

other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants - those with strong ties to

their country of origin - is that they feel neither one thing nor the other, she

replied to a question:

This has been my experience, in any case. For example, I never

know how to answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’ If I say I'm

from Rhode Island, people are seldom satisfied. They want to know

more, based on things such as my name, my appearance, etc.

Alternatively, if I say I'm from India, a place where I was not born and

have never lived, this is also inaccurate. It bothers me less now. But it

bothered me growing up, the feeling that there was no single place to

which I fully belonged. (Lahiri)

Same kind of situation we can see with Bharati Mukherjee, in her

novel Jasmine, her female protagonist Jasmine resembles in some way with

that of the author’s own personality. Bharati Mukherjee conveys her own attitude

about America through the protagonist Jasmine’s mouth, that America is a land

of freedom, promise and opportunities. Her life as an immigrant in America is

reflected through the life of Jasmine. Mukherjee spent some years in Canada

before moving to America, and those years of her stay in Canada were painful

and hopeless. She was quite happy and comfortable in the United States,

because she finds America friendlier as compared to Canada, and did not face

many problems in assimilating with American way of life, and in this sense, she,

in her own words is, “I view myself as an American author in the tradition of

other American authors whose ancestors arrived at Ellis Island” (Mukherjee 27).

As an immigrant she has no regret, no lamentation with her new identity in the

United States. She says. “I have adopted this country as my home … I view

myself as an American” (Mukherjee27).

In the novel Born Confused the cultural dislocation and relocation of

the main character Dimple and her family can be related with that of Tanuja

Desai Hidier herself. The writer herself is an immigrant who is presently living in

lxxv

USA, so she may have a firsthand experience about the sufferings of diasporic

people. Tanuja Desai Hidier in an interview, said about her writing of the novel

Born Confused, and she herself has been gone through some of the situations

as the characters in novel go through. She replied to a question as:

As far as this theme goes, of second generation America and

what it is to be bicultural, my perceptions of my Indianness or my

Americanness were first challenged at Brown because it was the first

time I had friends who were from Bombay and Delhi and Karachi and

Lahore and had grown up in those places. After getting to know them

really well, it became abundantly clear that I wasn't completely Indian or

Indian in the way I thought I was when I was in high school.(Hidier)

There is a comparison of Indian and western culture given in the novels

time and again both directly and indirectly, sometimes a satire on Indian social

set up and sometimes on American society. In Jasmine the protagonist left her

Indian home and went to America and she is the mouth piece of the writer, it is

through her that her voice is heard. No-doubt the novel is presently set in

America but at the time when Jasmine narrates about her past it is set in an

Indian village, Hasnapur. Hasnapur is a microcosm of India; it represents the life

standard of Indian women. She compares the living standard of Hasnapur with

that of American cities, condition of women in Hasnapur with that of America

women, and Indian roads, electricity system, and hygiene system with that of

America. Women is considered to do all domestic and menial jobs in India, to

prepare food, feed animals, collect firewood etc, “A twig sticking out of the

bundle of firewood I’d scavenged punched a star shaped wound into my

forehead”(3). Girls in India are not meant for professional jobs neither she is

allowed to go out of her house alone, she is meant to be confined in the four

walls of the house, “A girl shouldn’t be wandering here by herself”(4). Mukherjee

also gives a realistic picture of typical Indian village life style, the way they lack

proper sanitation and hygiene system, no electricity and no drinking water:

The water pooled there, sludgy brown, and was choked with

hyacinths and feces from the buffaloes that village boys washed

upstream. Women were scouring brass pots with ashes. Dhobis were

whomping clothes clean on the stone slab ... My old sisters, slow, happy

lxxvi

girls with butter-smooth arms, were still bathing on the steps that led

down to the river (4).

It also shows the system of arranging marriages in India, “Now your face

is scarred for life! How will the family ever find you a husband?”(5). Jasmine

herself narrates the tragedies of women class in India, she said, “All over our

district, bad luck dogged dowry less wives, rebellious wives, barren wives. They

fell into wells, they got run over by trains, they burned to death heating milk on

kerosene stoves”(41).

The things portrayed above about India, are totally contrasted to the

situation in America. In America on the other hand women is potrayed as

enjoying freedom, the living standard of people very high, and their elite culture

presented by Bharati Mukherjee in Jasmine can be seen as an overall

development of America. Jasmine enjoys full freedom; she does whatever she

likes to do.

Though the story of The Namesake is set in United States, Calcutta

hovers in the background. Usually, male is the head of the family in most Indian

Societies. In the novel Ashoke's father does all the talking when they come to

see Ashima. Ashoke is too shy even to raise his eyes to her. The novel also

depicts a panoramic view of the economic imbalance of a culturally rich and

varied country. Poverty peeps in the scenes of Calcutta. Both Ashima and her

daughter remove their gold ornaments before boarding a train in India. The

novelist also presents a contrast in the way an American and an Indian family

greet and feed guest. Gogol and Sonia think about their visit to Calcutta as:

"Every few weeks there is a different bed to sleep in, another family to live with,

and a new schedule to learn" (83).

The most vivid similarity among all three novels is the notion of cultural

hybridity. No character is pure and clean in any of the three novels; everyone is

contaminated with other culture that means nobody is either completely Indian

or completely American. In Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine, the title

character Jasmine, who travels from Hasnapur village in India to America,

adopts the American culture, and became American in her dress, in her walk

and talk but a kind of Indianness still runs in her blood. She is both an Indian as

well as an American at the same time. Other Indian characters like Devender

lxxvii

Vadhera and his family pass through the same situation, half Indian and half

American.

Although the influence of host culture on old generation is not so much

prevalent as compared to that of the second generation like Gogol, Sonia, and

Moushumi in The Namesake and Dimple, Gwyn, Karsh, Kavita and Sabina in

Born Confused. Gogol and Sonia in their efforts to become American, adopt

some American traits in their character. They become hybrid, and are standing

in between the two cultures. As the novel The Namesake ends, Gogol learns

that the answer is not to fully discard or attempt to diminish either culture, but to

mesh the two together. Gogol is not fully in tune with his identity until he realizes

that his personality is embellished by both cultures. He does not have to be one

or the other; he does not have to choose. He is made up of both, and instead of

weakening his pride is strengthened by this.

We can see in novel Born Confused how Dimple, and her family

and other characters in the novel, including an American girl Gwyn intentionally

or unintentionally try to become multi-cultural. Dimple’s family celebrates

Christmas although they were Hindus, and throw grand parties for this occasion.

Radha’s smoking in front of her son Karsh in the house of Shilpa can be seen as

an influence of American way of life. They take Red Wine also. Dimple is the

best example of this carrying with her double identity, she is both American as

well as Indian at the same time, and she is carrying two cultures. Dimple said:

“So not quite Indian and not quite American,” (13) but a blending of two. We see

how Dimple and Gwyn interchange their personal things with each other, Gwyn

wear Indian dresses of Dimple, she have two Rakhis from Dimple. She tried to

learn to cook Indian food. And in return Dimple was also influenced by Gwyn.

Dimple’s mother: “That Gwyn is such a good influence on you”(46). Dimple said,

“I came closer and looked down to her wrist on which two rakhis were now tied

in fiery flowery metallic glory”(37). In the Music Club Gwyn’s interest in Bhangra

is quite noticing, she asked Karsh about it, “So, bhangra, what is that anyways?

And Karsh replied: “well, it began as Punjabi folk music to celebrate the harvest-

...then it went West with immigrating South Asians and in the U.K people

starting fusing it with hip-hop” (234).

Jasmine maintains some of her Hasnapuri style and adopts some of

the American style as well.

lxxviii

As Hugh Tinker in his book The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants

from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh puts it,” there is a combination of push

and pull: the push of inadequate opportunity in South Asia and the pull of the

better prospects in the West" (qtd. in Bhaskar). We can see that kind of push

and pull in all the three novels, push from the Indian side and pull from

developed American society. In all three novels the characters migrate to other

countries because of the lack of economic opportunities in India. Jasmine left

Hasnapur to fulfil her husband’s dream, Ashoke and Ashima in The Namesake

also left for the same purpose and in Born Confused all characters who

migrated to America migrate for the same purpose. West always represents

wealth, development and bright future and East as opposite to all this.

Conclusion

The concept of diasporic space amid diaspora in America is shown very

artistically by Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee and Tanuja Desai Hidier in their

three novels The Namesake, Jasmine and Born Confused respectively. Every

character in the novel whether man or woman takes keen interest and struggles

hard for creating one’s own diasporic space. Although they all made a great

effort to be in their own space, to make their own home, but every individual has

his/her own notion of diaspora space. Different characters have different notions

of home. Lahiri’s characters keep on rolling in their own way, Mukherjee’s and

Desai’s in their own way.

Lahiri’s diaspora characters like Ashoke, Ashima, Gogol and Moushami

struggle their whole life to create their diaspora space. Ashoke is not so much

nostalgic about his Indian home, he tries to make his space in America, he feels

a sense of accomplishment when he was allotted an office with his name

‘Ashoke Ganguli’ etched on its door, he feels complete in that place. Ashima on

the other hand doesn’t feel comfortable in America, she creates an imaginary

Indian home, imagining other Bengali people as her family, physically she is in

America but mentally she is in India. Gogol, a young second generation

diaspora is totally different from his parents. His sense of belonging is also quite

lxxix

different; he weaves his own web in America, makes American girlfriends and

lives with American friends. He does not like his parents’ Indian cultured home,

and looks for his own independent space. Moushami, a British born daughter of

Indian immigrants living in America is very different from other characters; she is

neither Indian, nor American but prefers to be British.

On the other hand, Bharati Mukherjee focuses mainly on one female

character Jasmine, in her novel Jasmine, for whom America is a land of freedom

and individuality. She does not like Indian culture, and Indian feudal society. She

makes her space by assimilating with American people and American culture.

Tanuja Desai Hidier’s characters resemble to some extent with Lahiri’s

characters in sense that parents are attached more with Indian culture and

children to American. Dimple, the protagonist of the novel finds solace in her

darkroom, to which she is confined for most of the time. Her space making effort

amid diaspora keeps her in most part of the novel aloof from her parents. She

tries to mingle with her American childhood friend Gwyn. Dimple makes her

space in between Gwyn and her parent’s space. In post-modern societies the

traditional notion of ‘fixity of home’ and ‘fixity of space’ has changed and as

Clifford has rightly referenced the diaspora space is a global condition of ‘culture

as a site of travel’. Dimple’s parents create their own diasporic space within

American space. They struggled so much to create a space of their own in

America.

Study of diasporic space is an important and emerging field which

focuses on the physical spaces and their relations with human conditions and

emotions, and in fiction, space does not only provide a background, but many

times it has significant presence in the overall structure of the narrative.

Diasporic space is a phenomenon which involves social, physical and mental

affairs. After an overall analysis of selected texts, it can be said that all diasporic

people struggle to create a separate space in host country but everyone

struggles in his/her own way. The study of the three novels taken up for

comparison suggests that all the characters try their best to penetrate their roots

deep into the American soil, but everyone is not fully successful in doing so. A

common thread of connection can be traced in the writings of these writers as

lxxx

the three of them share a common diasporic identity as well as same

multicultural background. No two characters have same notion of home,

homeland and space, everybody has his/her own thought about America and

India. The link between American and Indian culture inevitably brings into

existence a third undefined, and unnamed ‘cultural space’ which fills the gap as

‘third space’ and this ‘third space’ becomes the creative, generative location for

the evolving new culture.

lxxxi

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